And We're Starting at the End
by raisemegfromperdition
Summary: Dick Roman is dead, taking Dean and Castiel with him to God knows where. All Sam has left is his brother's car, a pit in his soul, and the hope of a cliff to drive off. When he slams on the brakes to stop from hitting the dog, the last person he expects to come running up is the girl he said goodbye to six years ago. spoilers up through 7x23
1. Chapter 1

**I suppose this will be a re-imagining of season 8. This is Sam's story, from the moment he loses Dean, through his fight to get Dean back, through undertaking the trials, through finding people he thought were lost forever. And it's the story of the girl by his side, the girl who promised she could handle anything.**

**Thanks to tumblr users kerrionmywaywardsons, wearelosechesters, candycornisaveggiesam, and ekeziel.**

Sam had picked the highway at random.

A part of his mind knew that he was heading east — you didn't grow up a child of John Winchester and not learn basic things like cardinal directions. And it helped that the next morning, the sun had risen behind him.

He didn't really care. He just kept driving, and driving and driving, in Dean's car.

It hadn't been the first time that Sam had seen his brother die, of course it hadn't been. Dean had been as good as dead in that hospital in Jefferson City, Missouri and then there had been Broward County, Florida, and New Harmony, Indiana. He had died before his brother in Storm Lake, Iowa, but he had still seen the blood on Dean's shirt. Between his eyes and the windshield, Sam could see a map, with each city glowing red, pulsating, mocking him. Now Sam could add another point of light. Chicago, Illinois.

Without his willing it, Sam snorted. It fit, in a way. Dean had once bargained with Death to save Chicago. So of course,_of course_, that was where Death took him back.

Sam kept driving. He had taken Kevin home, and not really heard any of his protests when Sam left him in the arms of his sobbing mother. He knew Kevin wanted to help.

There was nothing left to help with.

It was playing in Sam's mind like a loop. Castiel had pulled Roman's head back. Dean had stabbed Roman in the neck. Black sticky ooze everywhere.

And then.

Nothing.

He had always thought that the two worst nights of his life were the nights he'd buried Dean.

This was worse. Having no body to bury was infinitely worse.

He had stopped once so far, for gas, and then kept going. He wasn't heading anywhere, not really. Maybe if he got lucky there would be a cliff he could just drive off.

Because he couldn't try to bring Dean back. Not after last time. Not after Lilith, and Ruby, and the apocalypse. Not after he'd failed Dean so badly, failed him because he thought he was doing the right thing.

Besides, Sam had no idea where Dean even _was_ – although Castiel was with him, and so they'd probably made it to heaven. Good. That was good. Dean deserved peace, now, after everything.

A sign flashed past the window. Montgomery, New York. How far until the ocean? He was far enough upstate for the cliffs to start, wasn't he? Probably just another couple of hours –—

"Shit," he hissed, slamming on the brakes when a shadow darted out into the road. The dog – and he could see now that it was a dog, a black dog with a white patch on its underbelly – froze for a moment and stared into the Impala's headlights before scampering off the road.

"Damn it, Keates!" Sam heard a woman shout before a pale figure knelt down behind the dog and wrapped her arms around it. Sam didn't know why – and later he would ask himself exactly why – but he stopped the car and stepped out.

"Is the dog all right?" he shouted, leaving the driver's side door open as he walked over to where the woman was running her hands through the dog's fur.

"I – I think so," she replied, her voice shaky. She didn't look up, her black hair hiding her face, and her hands were still trembling as she cupped them around the dog's face. "You're okay, right, Keates?"

Sam hesitated a moment, then knelt down beside her, not close enough to touch. "I'm so sorry."

"Oh, no!" she protested turning to face him. "It's not your fault at all, it's just my dumb dog–" she interrupted herself, eyes wide. "Oh my God."

Now that he could see her face, Sam froze too. Memories of a soft blue sweater and a barber's razor and a promise that she could take care of herself swarmed his head, and he heard himself ask, "Sarah?"

"My God," she repeated, smoothing her hair back from her face. "Sam."

Sam's mind was blank. There was probably something that he should say here, that the version of himself he'd been six years ago would have said here. This was Sarah Blake, the first woman who he had talked to after Jessica. This was the girl Dean had told him to marry.

She had mattered, once. Now she didn't. Sam shuffled his feet and tried to think of a way to get away from her, to get back in the car and keep driving.

Before he could turn around, Sarah shoved her hands back into the pocket of her hoodie. "So. Um," she started, then closed her mouth, then tried again. "Same car, I guess?"

"What? Oh. Yeah." Sam ran a hand through his hair. _Dean's car. It was Dean's car. But Dean wasn't here to drive it._

Sarah bounced on the balls of her feet for a moment, and the dog nudged her hand. "Are you picking Dean up from somewhere?"

It would have hurt less if she'd slapped him. He couldn't, he couldn't pick Dean up, not this time, he had lost Dean, he'd let him die, he hadn't even seen him coming, he should have been able to do something, he should have, he_should_ have –

"Sam?"

Sam swallowed around the shards of glass in his throat. "He's dead, Sarah."

He had said it, and now it was real.

Sarah's face went white in the Impala's headlights, and her mouth dropped open. "Oh my God I'm so sorry," she whispered, eyes wide. "Was it… was it on…"

_Was it on a hunt,_ she meant. He had told her how dangerous hunting was, hadn't he? He thought he remembered that conversation. And another one, later: _When people are around me, they get hurt. _"Yeah, it was," he heard himself answer. "Last night."

Had it only been last night?

"Jesus." Sarah pressed her hands over her mouth. "_Jesus_, Sam, I am so—"

"Yeah." Sam cut her off, and he knew that he should feel bad about how sharp his voice was. He didn't give a damn. He had more than enough to _feel bad about_ at the moment. "You're sorry. I get it." He stepped away from her, towards where the impala's engine was still running. "Listen, I gotta go."

"Wait. Sam, wait! Go where?" Her hand shot out and her fingers wrapped around the sleeve of his jacket. He stared down at them, thinking about how _easy_ it would be to shake her off, to keep going. Before he could answer, she went on without letting him go, "Look. Don't. Just… please don't."

"Don't do what?" he asked, his voice flat.

"Don't do whatever it is that you're thinking of doing," she rushed. "Sam, I remember you, I remember the way you were around your brother. And I'm not letting you be alone right now."

"Sarah…" Sam shook his head. "Let go, please."

"No." She shook her head vehemently. "No, here's what's going to happen. We – me and you and Keates – are going to get into your car, and I'm going to give you directions to my house, and I'm going to feed you, and then you're going to sleep. And tomorrow morning, we're going to talk."

"Sarah, I can't. I can't keep… doing this."

"Doing – you know what, no. I'm not asking." She tugged on the dog's leash and started for the Impala. "I'm not going to let you argue with me, either, Sam. Come on."

He watched her stride off to the car, and his lungs shifted in his chest, expanding a little, in a way that they hadn't done since before Chicago. He didn't owe Sarah anything. He didn't have any sort of obligation to her, and nothing she said could seal up the pit in his gut, could make him forget that Dean wasn't there.

But she had opened the back door of the car, and snapped her fingers at the dog, who had hopped up onto the seat and settled itself against the upholstery. Sarah glanced over her shoulder at Sam before sliding into the passenger's seat.

Clearly, he wasn't getting rid of either one of them.

Still he hesitated, until she rolled down her window and leaned her head out to yell at him. "So are we going, or what?"

Sam's mind filled in what came next, what had happened next the last time Sarah had said that to him.

"_Sam – marry that girl_."

Without deciding to do it, Sam walked back to the car and put it in drive. "So. Where am I going?"

**So what do we think? Please review!**

**And i'm on tumblr at kennedyclintonkat - some spoilers and discussion of this story will happen there, as well as meta on how s9 is going, and a lot of Sam Winchester appreciation.**


	2. Chapter 2

**So, here we are again. I've never been any good at talking about my own writing, so here you go :)**

"I moved to Montgomery to get some distance from my dad," Sarah told him as he drove along the main street of the town. "We're about half an hour south of New Paltz, so I still work for him, but it's not a situation where I'm constantly on call."

Sam nodded without saying anything in reply. Only half of his mind was really listening to her (the other half was back in Chicago and _oh God Dean where did you go Dean I can't do this I can't_), but he could understand better than most why Sarah would have needed to leave home, and yet been unable to really go.

Sarah went on, "It's just me and Keats, Sam. And we won't ask questions. You don't need to worry about talking until you're ready. Left here," she added, before Sam had to think of a response.

She didn't say anything else other than to give him direction for the rest of the drive, and Sam was grateful. He still wasn't quite sure what he was doing – why he'd stopped rather than hit the dog, why he'd gotten out of the car instead of continuing along the road. He'd been so _close _to the ocean, to the coastal cliffs. His head was pounding, and it seemed to get worse with every moment that he spent alive.

"First on the right," Sarah murmured, and Sam felt his hands turn the wheel and guide the Impala to park alongside the curb. Sarah waited until he'd killed the engine before she opened her door and stepped out to get the dog. Sam sighed, and then forced himself to get out too. _One night_, he told himself against the voice screaming in his head. Sarah wanted to help him, to open her home to him. He couldn't really throw that back in her face. Besides, he could be gone before she woke up in the morning.

He stood for a moment and studied the house over the roof of the car. It was a simple house – he thought he remembered from that art history class all those years ago that this style was Cape Cod – and in the daylight maybe the paint color would be light blue. There were a few flower patches framing the front lawn, and the porch light gleamed yellow from beside the door. It was clean and neat and ordered, and it made Sam want to vomit.

Something wet nudged at his hand, and he startled before looking down and seeing the dog staring up at him with big wet eyes. He ghosted his hand over the top of the dog's head, then looked up when he felt Sarah's eyes on him. Knowing it was expected of him, he moved to the back of the car and unlocked the trunk, forcing himself to ignore Dean's duffel as he grabbed his own. They hadn't even really unpacked at Rufus's cabin, because Dean had always wanted to be ready to ditch the house. He shouldered his own duffel and followed Sarah up the path leading to the front door.

Once she'd opened the front door and let the two of them – the three of them; the dog had shoved past Sam's hip and paused for Sarah to pat its head and then trotted off down a hallway – Sarah flicked on a light in the foyer and glanced at Sam before passing through to the kitchen. Automatically, he followed her, even though his stomach turned at the thought of food. "I was going to heat up a lasagna I made this past weekend," she told him, turning on lights and then going to wash her hands. "But if you'd like something else–"

"Can I just–" he interrupted her before stopping and reaching his free hand up to rub at the back of his neck. "Sarah, I'm sorry, but I'm really not hungry."

She studied him for a moment before nodding in understanding. "I get it. You want to just crash?" When he nodded once, she smiled faintly and said, "Okay, then. Follow me?"

She led him down a hallway and around a corner before she pushed open a door. "Here you go," she murmured, again flipping on the light. Sam surveyed the simply decorated bedroom. The bed was neatly made up and there was a lamp and a few books on the night table – nothing personal, obviously a guest room. "Bathroom is through that door," Sarah pointed, "and it's fully stocked. Since tomorrow is Saturday, I'll be up for breakfast around seven but – but feel free to sleep in, okay?"

Sam nodded without saying anything and stepped forward to place his bag on the bed. This was getting harder and harder – he shouldn't have come here, he should have walked away from her when he had the chance, he should have kept going after he'd been sure he hadn't hit the dog.

"All right. I guess… that's it. Shout if you need anything." Sarah smiled at him again before turning and walking out of the room. But before she closed the door behind her, she turned back. "Sam?"

"Yeah?" he responded automatically, even though everything in him was screaming at her to just leave, just go away and let him alone.

"Listen, I know… I know I only met him the one time," she started, and Sam closed his eyes and turned away. His throat was tightening – he couldn't talk about Dean, he couldn't, not with the girl who he had liked so much. Sarah pushed on, the words tumbling from her in a rush, like she was determined to get them out before she lost her nerve. "But I don't think he would want you to do whatever it was you were going to do just now. Just think about that, okay? Please?"

Sam's hands were frozen, still clenched so tight as they wrapped around the strap of his duffel. How dare she. How _dare _she. She didn't know Dean, she had no right to speak for him, it wasn't her fucking place, _how dare she_ presume to do this to him? To Dean?

"I didn't mean to offend," she added, her voice floating through the red haze clouding his vision. "Sam, just – just leave it the night? Please?" When Sam didn't answer, Sarah sighed and whispered, "Well, anyway, good night, Sam. Sleep well."

He heard the door click shut behind her, and even then he couldn't move for a full two minutes. She had no right telling him what Dean would want. Sam knew Dean better than he knew anyone, he knew better than anyone what Dean would _want_, and _do_, and _say_, and he didn't need someone like Sarah Blake to tell him.

_Well then? _A tiny voice asked him. _What would Dean want you to do right now?_

Abruptly, Sam turned and strode into the bathroom, catching himself before he slammed the door.

The shower had been too hot, so hot it burned, but it didn't help get the ghost of the feeling of that black ooze off his skin. He got out eventually, and pulled on a pair of sweats, as well as the charcoal hoodie that always passed between him and Dean in bad times, and he sat on the edge of the bed and stared at his hands.

The last time Sam had slept without Dean in the next bed had been... longer than he cared to remember. While Dean was in hell? It had to have been. And then it was shitty motel rooms or abandoned houses, like it had always been. Ruby had been there sometimes. Most of the time.

And now here he was. A neat little bedroom of a neat little house somewhere in suburbia, with a woman and her dog somewhere down the hallway. The whole thing reeked of normal. Again, it brought the bile up in Sam's throat, and he swallowed hard.

Maybe he would catch a few hours of sleep, just enough to make him alert enough to get out of Sarah's house early the next morning without her noticing. Even if she was right, even if Dean wouldn't want him to do this, he couldn't keep going. No matter what anyone said. Dean would understand that. He had made the same choice himself five years ago.

Without bothering to pull back the covers, Sam lay back on the bed and stared up at the shadows on the ceiling. Dean had always been better at this than Sam had – at going on after everything had been lost. Sam still hated, hated with everything he had, the fact that Dean had sold his soul for him, but at least Dean had worked out something to do. And then, later, Dean had kept his promise to Sam to go live a normal life. He'd been happy with Lisa and Ben. He had loved them and they had loved him.

And what had Sam done the last time he'd been left alone? He'd started the fucking apocalypse.

_Ah, c'mon, Sammy. We both know I broke the first seal. This one isn't on you, kiddo_.

"Don't call me that," Sam muttered automatically, and then flinched. It hadn't been Dean's voice. It had been an echo in his head. The last person to echo in Sam's head had been Lucifer, and maybe that had been easier.

But after that it was silent, save for the sound of Sam's own blood moving through his body, keeping his heart beating, however much he wished it would just stop. Maybe if he begged it hard enough, it would do just that.

_Please. Just… please_.

Eventually Sam drifted away, and the last thought he remembered having was that he wouldn't wake up.

He did, though. The very next morning.

The sunlight streaming through the windows above his head made him squint and throw an arm over his eyes. "Dean," he muttered, "close the goddamn blinds."

There was no muttered swearing in return, no rustle as another set of blankets and sheets moved, and Sam squinted an eye open to see if Dean was still asleep.

And then he remembered.

It paralyzed him for a moment, the memory. His heart slowed, then sped up. _This can't have happened. This doesn't fucking happen_…

Out. Out, he had to get out of here, he had to go, he had to get back in the car, he had to go –-

He haphazardly tugged on a pair of jeans and made sure everything was stuffed in his bag so Sarah wouldn't have to worry about cleaning up after him, and strode for the bedroom door. His vision shook as he got almost all the way to the front door without seeing either Sarah or the dog. But when he rounded the corner and the front door came into view, her voice called out, "Sam, wait."

For the second time, he stopped for her without knowing why.

She had risen halfway from her seat at her breakfast table, in the middle of the kitchen just off the foyer. Her hair was caught up in a messy bun, and there was a dish of something that looked like cinnamon rolls on the table in front of her beside a carafe of orange juice. Sam's stomach turned, but before he could put his hand on the doorknob, she said, "I googled you. Last night."

"What?" he asked blankly. It took a moment for the words to register.

"I googled you," Sarah repeated. "Apparently you broke out of prison five years ago, and then you were spotted three years later destroying a supply of vaccine in Iowa." She rose the rest of the way and took a step towards him as he stood frozen. "You're also legally dead."

Sam shrugged halfheartedly. "Apparently not. Not yet."

"Look, you owe me an explanation." She came to a halt right in front of him, and tilted her head up to meet his eyes. "I remember that spring, when it says you burned down that distribution plant. I was in Chicago that week for an art show. I remember the storm, and I remember how suddenly it stopped. How suddenly _everything _stopped, even though that whole year had been a weird string of weather patterns. Sam… what's happened? And what happened to Dean?"

"Nothing related," Sam muttered. "Listen, thanks for letting me crash–"

"Shut up," she snapped, and took hold of his wrist. It was the first time she'd touched him. There was a determined glint in her eye that somehow made Sam comply, and he let her tug him into the kitchen. "Sit. Sit and just _talk _to me. Tell me what happened two nights ago, and I'll help you fix it. I will."

Sam snorted. "There is no fixing it."

"There might be," Sarah insisted, fiercely. "Look – look, before I met you, I didn't think ghosts could exist. And since then, I've kind of stopped believing that anything is impossible. So tell me."

Sam watched her, the way she sat down with her spine straight and her face open, expectant. Her words ran through his head again, and as always, as ever, he asked himself, _What would Dean do?_

Sam had only once, in his entire life, seen his big brother give up. _"__Either __it's a trap to get me there to make me say yes, or it's not a trap and I'm gonna say yes anyway. And I will. I'll do it. Fair warning."_ But he hadn't, had he? He'd let Sam talk him out of it.

"_I just didn't want to let you down."_

"_You didn't. You almost did, but you didn't."_

Dean would try to figure out a way to bring Sam back.

Sam reached out, and pulled a chair back from the table. He saw Sarah swallow a smile as he sat down across from her, inhaled, and opened his mouth.

**Review for me? Is Sam making the right choice in trusting her?**


	3. Chapter 3

**Trigger warning for suicidal ideation**

**Thanks to Kerri (tumblr user kerrionmywaywardsons) for being the best sounding board a girl could ask for**

The answer was three days.

If anyone ever asked Sam Winchester how long after having your entire world shatter around you, you would be able to eat again, the answer was three days.

He had spent the first day driving, just driving, and he had stopped only when he had almost hit a dog. He didn't know why it had made him stop, why Sarah had been able to pull him off the road, why he had agreed to sleep in her house for a night.

On the second day, he had sat at Sarah's breakfast table, with the sun streaming through the neat white eyelet curtains on the window over the sink, and he had told her. It had been hard at first, but somehow once he had started, he hadn't been able to stop. And he hadn't known where to begin, so he had simply started from the last time he had seen her, and rambled from there. The patch the sun made on the white tiled floor had moved from near the refrigerator to up and over the table, and Sam was choking out how it felt to watch Dean give up, to watch the light leave his eyes as he prepared to go find Michael and say yes, when he noticed that Sarah had placed her hand in his, and he was gripping her fingers so hard that the blood was purpling in the tips. He had released her like he'd been burned. "Sorry," he'd muttered. "Sorry."

She had shaken her head and reached out again, this time taking his hand in both of hers. "Don't you dare apologize. Keep going."

And he had. The cinnamon rolls got cold on the table in front of them, and the orange juice got warm, and the dog wandered in and curled up on the floor between their chairs. It felt… so good to finally be able to just _talk _to someone about it, someone who hadn't been hurt by what he had done when he didn't have a soul, someone who hadn't been depending on his steady optimism to prevent their own despair during the year of Dick Roman.

And at the end, when he arrived at the last time he had seen Dean, his throat had closed up, and he had squeezed his eyes shut, and he had flinched away when Sarah had reached up to card her fingers through his hair. She had understood, and dropped her hand back to the table, but she said, "And what then?"

He had shrugged. "I took Kevin home. I got in the car. I almost hit your dog."

Sarah had frowned. "But that girl – Meg? You don't know what happened to her?"

That had given Sam pause. He owed Meg, and he knew it – he was dead several times over since the apocalypse if it hadn't been for her. "Meg can take care of herself," he'd forced out. "Besides, I wasn't… wasn't really thinking."

"Of course," Sarah had stammered. "Of course. But, Sam… there's nothing you could have done."

Her eyes had been so wide and so earnest, and the skin of her palm had been soft and smooth against his own, and it had been exactly the wrong thing to say. "He would… never… he wouldn't have let it happen to me," Sam had ground out, his free hand curling up into a fist and pressing against his lips. The next words had been muffled. "He would have found a way to stop it. Or he would have found a way to get me back."

Sarah had been silent for another long moment, but she hadn't let go of Sam's hand. "I mean absolutely no disrespect," she had started slowly, and Sam's eyes had traced the knots in the wood of the table as she continued, "but… Sam, it can't be _good_, this habit the two of you seem to have–"

"It's not that simple," Sam had cut her off, not looking up from the grain of the table. "I can't… I can't do it without him. The last time I tried, it triggered the apocalypse."

To Sam's utter surprise, Sarah had snorted. "Not for nothing did I just sit through an hour and a half of you talking, Sam. I'm pretty sure that the apocalypse _started_ when a demon dropped you in an empty town in South Dakota. After that… it doesn't sound like there's anything that anyone could have done to stop it."

"You weren't there" had been his automatic response, and she had opened her mouth to protest, but a gentle weight had appeared on Sam's leg. He and Sarah had looked down, he with his eyebrows raised and she trying not to smile, and seen the dog resting its head on Sam's thigh, looking up at him with big liquid eyes.

"He does that," Sarah had explained. "He doesn't like it when people are sad."

Without Sam really deciding to do it, he'd dropped his hand to the dog's head and scratched behind the ears. "What did you say his name was?"

"Keates. After–"

"The poet," Sam had supplied, feeling the corners of his mouth lift up as the dog gave him a big sloppy smile.

"Yeah," Sarah had said, a smile creeping into her voice. "I was almost an English major." She had paused before plunging ahead. "Look, Sam, I was hoping you could help me out with something today?"

"Sarah…" his hand had grown still on the dog's head. "I need to get going." He'd felt drained after telling her the story of the last six years, but after all the words were out of him, the pit in his stomach had gnawed at him again.

"Too bad," she'd smiled a brittle smile. "I don't trust you to not hurt yourself right now, so I stole your keys last night. Sorry."

"You stole my–"

"So," she'd continued loudly, "as long as I have you here, you can give me a hand on the back porch? I was going to repaint it today. It's already been stripped and sanded."

"Sarah–"

She'd stood up and gone to grab a tray of ice cubes from the freezer, and then dropped the ice into the orange juice with a sort of plinking noise. "I stayed up most of last night thinking up counterarguments to just about every single excuse for leaving you could have right now."

"I just–"

"Go on. Try me." She'd reached up to knot her hair up with an elastic band she'd had around her wrist, keeping defiant eyes on him the whole time.

Sam had taken a deep breath. He'd been on a streak of brutal honesty all morning; why not keep it up? "I don't want to keep living," he said deliberately, "not when I failed the only family I have left."

Sarah's face had tightened a little, but she'd squared her shoulders before she'd replied. "Well, too bad. You would be failing Dean even more if you hurt yourself, because – from what I gather – he spent your whole life doing his damndest to keep you safe. Didn't he?"

He'd swallowed hard before repeating, "You weren't there," but whether she'd known it or not, she'd had him there.

"_Don't you get mad at me. Don't you do that. I had to – I had to look out for you. That's my job_."

Sarah had been watching the war on his face, her dog beside her, and Sam would have sworn that both of them were raising their eyebrows at him.

"_You're alive, and I feel good for the first time in a long time_."

"Sarah… say what you want about whose fault it really was, but the fact remains that the last time I didn't have Dean to… to stop me, I started some shit."

"Well," she'd said matter-of-factly, sitting back down and pulling a cinnamon roll out of the pan and dropping it onto her plate before licking a drop of icing off her fingertip, "you've got two things you didn't have last time. You have me, and you have Keates."

The dog had yipped, like it was trying to agree with her.

She'd gone on, "Look, I'm serious, I could use your help with the porch. The fifteen-year-old kid who lives next door and his friends aren't worth the ten bucks an hour I'd have to have paid all of them, and I'm essentially keeping you captive. And it's not like this is the end of that story, either."

Sam had gone still. "What are you saying?"

Sarah had shrugged and torn off a bit of cinnamon roll. "You're not going to be happy until you find out for sure where Dean is, and if he's anywhere other than heaven, you're not going to be happy until you get him back." She'd popped the piece of roll in her mouth. "And God knows I'm not letting you deal with that alone. So."

She'd munched away at the cinnamon roll and done a decent job of ignoring Sam as he stared at her, mouth slightly open. He'd felt dizzy, and buffered around, the way he remembered feeling when he and Dean had met her on that case. "You just found out for sure that heaven and hell and purgatory all exist… and your reaction is to offer me to break into one of them."

"Yeah." She'd shrugged. "Eat your cinnamon roll. Or I can warm it up if you–"

"Sarah, this is insane." He'd shaken his head, as if that would stop her, as if it had stopped her last time.

She'd shrugged and told him, "I had a seven-year-old girl almost kill me with a razor. Changes how you see the world a little. You'd know that better than I would." When she'd seen that he'd looked unconvinced, she'd sighed and set down what was left of her roll. "Look, Sam, I'm not really asking for much, here. I'm asking you to stay alive, and I'm asking you to help me paint my porch. And I'm offering to help you get back your brother and your friend, whenever you're ready to start looking for them. Deal?"

"I–"

"Do we have a deal?"

Her jaw had been set in a firm line that Sam remembered from when this girl, this art dealer who had probably never been in a fight in her life, had barged into his and Dean's motel room and demanded explanations, and then demanded inclusion. Not once, in Sam Winchester's limited experience with her, had Sarah Blake ever taken "no" for an answer.

"For now," he'd heard himself allowing. "I'll help you with the porch. But I'm gonna want my damn car keys back at some point, Sarah."

She'd ignored him and ordered him to eat, and he'd really tried, but the best he'd managed had been to slowly tear his cinnamon roll to shreds and leave them all on the plate. He was sure she knew, but she hadn't said anything.

And after that, she had led him to the back yard, where they had taken rolling brushes and plastic tarp and painted the porch a gleaming white. They had taken periodic breaks for water – beer, as the day had worn on – and Sarah had fallen over laughing when Keates had spotted a squirrel and bounded over the still-tacky paint to chase after it, leaving ragged white footprints on the lawn. The whole thing felt inexplicably surreal to Sam – he had just seen his brother vanish, and here he was painting a porch.

He had turned Sarah down when she had offered to order a pizza around two in the afternoon, and he had applied the second coat of paint in silence, and that night he had ignored her when she asked him what he'd like for dinner. Instead, he'd gone back to the guest room she'd given him, and sat down on the bed, and taken out his gun. It had a pearl handle, and it was engraved all along the barrel, and it matched Dean's. It had been the only time that Dad had ever made a big deal out of Christmas – that year that Sam had been thirteen and Dean had been seventeen, Dad had come back to the motel beaming with pride and set the matching boxes down on the table, and Dean had crowed over the gun and had taken it apart and put it back together, and Sam had tried to match his enthusiasm, because it was important to Dean, and to Dad. He'd already known how to shoot, of course – Dad had taken him out for the first time when he was eight. But suddenly Dean wanted to spend more time than usual with Sam in empty fields, having stupid little competitions over target practice. The guns had meant something to Dean – not just his own gun, but that he and Sam had guns that _matched. _Sam had seen Dean's face when Dean noticed that Sam still had the gun after Stanford. It had mattered to him. It mattered that Sam had this gun.

Sam made sure it was loaded, and cocked it, and placed it against his temple, and closed his eyes.

So easy. It would be _so easy_…

His breaths were coming faster, his finger trembled on the trigger, his heart pounded against his chest –-

_Dean shouted his name, had lowered his weapon when Sam came into view from around the corner and Sam had smiled so big and said "Dean" because his brother was here everything was going to be okay but Dean told him to look out and then it hurt something in his back seared so hot and he was falling why was he falling why was Dean running why was Dean shouting "no" –-_

"Fuck," Sam had gasped, dropping his phone so that it clattered on the floor between his feet as he dropped his head into shaking hands. He'd sobbed, and gasped, and remembered.

He couldn't. He couldn't. Dean would kill him.

That had been the second day.

The third day was a Monday, and Sarah was already gone for work when Sam stumbled out into the kitchen. He might have shouted out in his sleep – he didn't remember, but the nightmares were still biting at the edges of his mind when he woke. But the cheerful note that Sarah had left for him on the kitchen table didn't say anything about it either way.

_Sam – I'll be back around 5:30 or 6. Help yourself to anything in the kitchen, and could you do me a favor? The steps up to the back porch are a little loose – do you think you could take a look at them for me? Keates will keep you company. Thanks! – Sarah _

He sighed at the idea that she was trying to keep him busy, trying not to leave him alone with his thoughts. As he dropped the note down onto the table, the dog had wandered in, stretched, and sat in the doorway, head tilted as he observed Sam with curious liquid eyes.

"She wants me," Sam said slowly, not bothering to keep the incredulity out of his voice, "to fix the porch steps."

Keates kept staring at him, and Sam felt a little foolish. He was talking to a dog, in the kitchen of a woman he'd met once before, and his brother was dead.

Keates twitched in a way that might have been raising his eyebrows at Sam, and Sam hesitated before picking up Sarah's note and reading it again.

He knew from experience that moving, that working with his hands, kept him going when nothing else could. After Broward County, he had been a heartbeat away from eating his gun every single moment of every single day, and the only things that had stopped him were hunting and the hope of finding Gabriel – the promise of a goal.

So if fixing Sarah's porch steps would keep Sam alive long enough to find Dean, then shit.

Did Sarah know that? Had she guessed at it from him telling her about the two times he'd buried his brother?

Sam sighed and turned back to the dog, shoving the note into his pocket. "You know where she keeps the toolbox?"

Keates barked once, then stood and trotted out of the kitchen. Not stopping to think about the fact that he was technically following a dog, Sam trailed after him, and they eventually wound up in the garage, where Keates pointed his nose at a small workbench along the wall. Sam grabbed the toolbox that was sitting on it, and headed to the backyard, the dog shuffling behind him.

Sam spent about two hours on the porch steps, pulling up boards and sanding them down and nailing them back into place, as the dog watched. Eventually, Sam started talking to him. "Dean hates dogs," he said matter-of-factly as he swung the hammer. "Probably because… because of hellhounds. I don't know. He didn't have much of an opinion on them before hell either way."

Keates tilted his head, and it looked to Sam like an encouragement. Talking about Dean to something that couldn't reply felt nice, in a way. If Keates had opinions on Sam's words about Dean, he couldn't tell him. Sam went on, "When we saw Bones in heaven, Dean was so… I mean, I know he was angry about everything else that was going on, because that was such a fucked up experience, but I don't know if he thought Bones being there meant I didn't care about his time in hell, or how he'd gotten there." Sam blinked hard. "I would _never_ – I didn't care about the dog, not really. I would never pick anything over him. And he thought I would." He set the hammer down and ran a hand through his hair, before dropping both hands into his lap. "How did it get so screwed up, Keates?"

Keates got up and hopped down the porch steps. He nosed his way under Sam's arm, and Sam automatically reached up and dropped his right hand onto Keates's head while still staring at his left palm. "You see this scar?" Sam muttered, tilting his hand so that the ridge of tissue cast a small shadow over his skin. "I've been poking at it for the last three days. It's not working."

Sam felt the vibration from Keates's whine where his head rested on Sam's knee. Sam just rubbed his hand back and forth, feeling the fur on Keates's head tickle his palm. "I've got to get him back," Sam muttered, staring down at the grass between Keates's paws. "I owe him that. And he'd do it for me." He paused. "But that doesn't matter, not really. I just… I have to get him back."

Keates huffed a sound that might have been approval.

Eventually Sam shook himself back into motion, and Keates got up and trotted away to a sunny patch of grass while Sam picked up the hammer again. He moved more quickly now, finishing up the steps, then moving on to a crooked shutter he'd abstractly noticed earlier. And the whole time, he was mapping out what they'd done a year ago, every move he and Dean and Bobby had made to map Raphael and Castiel and Crowley's path into purgatory. They had come close, so close, to beating them to it. Surely he could get back there.

There was a way to open purgatory, if Dean was there.

And he knew that there was a way into hell, because Castiel had travelled it, twice, to get Dean and to get Sam.

And if Dean was in heaven… well, Sam had to know. If Dean was in heaven, Sam could be happy.

So when Sarah came home (at three in the afternoon, rather than 5:30 or 6), her tense, nervous smile melted into something more genuine at whatever she saw in Sam's face. She wandered into where he was perched on her living room sofa, his laptop open on the coffee table. "Did you… get that porch step done?"

Sam nodded quickly, glancing up at her. "I did, yeah. Listen, I'm gonna need my car keys back."

Sarah's face froze, eyes wide. "Sam – Sam, no, please, we'll work something out–"

"What? Oh God, no, not for that," Sam rushed, and he watched as her shoulders dropped in relief. "Here, let's sit."

Hesitantly, Sarah moved forward into the room and sat on the sofa, toeing off her shoes and tucking her knees up under her body. "Okay," she said slowly, studying Sam. "what's up?"

Keates hopped up on the couch between them, folding himself up so that his tail brushed Sam's hip while his nose rested on Sarah's foot. Sam patted his flank as he said, "I need to go to the cabin in Montana where me and Dean were hiding out. I need access to our library."

A smile flickered across Sarah's face, and she leaned forward. "Wait. Wait, so we're–"

"You don't have to come with me," he interrupted, but she was already shaking her head.

"Like I'm gonna let you go alone. Come on. How much of a drive is it gonna be?"

"Sarah, you have a life here. A job." Sam shifted to face her more fully. "Look, you – you've opened up your home for me in a way that I have no right to expect. You kept me alive for two days. And I'm grateful. But I can't take up any more space in your life."

"Sam, come on." She extended one leg to poke him with her toe. "I'm sure we've had this conversation before. I can handle this." She uncurled and fully sat up. "I _want_ to handle this. I'm in, whatever it takes."

Sam studied her as she studied him, and for the first time in who knew how long, Sam felt himself beginning to smile. "Yeah?"

"Yeah." Sarah stood up and smacked Sam gently on the shoulder. "Now, let me order a pizza so we can plan this road trip." She went off in search of the phone, Keates trailing behind her, and Sam pulled up word documents that he'd thrown together not too long ago.

Eventually Sarah came back, and Sam started walking her through the steps they'd taken to get to hell, and purgatory, and what he knew of heaven.

When the pizza came, he picked up a slice.

And that was the third day.

**And scene. Road trip coming up.**

**I'm on tumblr at kennedyclintonkat if you ever want to chat.**


	4. Chapter 4

**As always, thanks to Kerri.**

* * *

Sarah did everything quietly on Monday morning.

She showered, she got dressed, she wrote a note for Sam, and she patted Keates's head. Everything was a whisper, a shadow, a gentle shift, padding down the hallway with her shoes in hand so the stiletto heels wouldn't click against the hardwood floors. She didn't want to wake him. She didn't want to face him, now that she'd had a whole night to process what he'd said to her.

_"And then… I don't know. The light distracted him, distracted Lucifer, and I noticed this… this little toy soldier. I'd stuck it in the ashtray when I was a little kid, like really little, and I just… I remembered. And I don't know how I did it; I still don't know how I did it… I just kind of shoved him back. And I let go of Dean, and I promised him that it was okay. And then Michael was there, and he said something, and I just… I looked at Dean again, and he was still there, still there with me, and so I jumped. For him. Michael grabbed me on the way down, but I jumped."_

That had been the apocalypse. The fucking _apocalypse_, and it had been stopped by the guy who was sleeping in her guest room. How did that even happen? In what universe did shit like this happen?

She beeped her car open and slid into her driver's seat, but she didn't start the engine.

_"And so I jumped."_

Who _was_ he, who was this guy, and what had he done with the guy who had taken her out to dinner and smiled with big dimples and kissed her hard before he'd gone?

She was in over her head. She was in so fucking far over her head – the closest she'd ever come to dealing with a suicidal person was watching a special episode of _Saved by the Bell,_ for God's sake.

And what was even going to happen next? Sam wasn't going to be happy holing up in her guest room and fixing up her house forever; eventually he was going to demand to leave. He couldn't stay. And God knew she couldn't hold him. Eventually, he was going to decide he wanted to find Dean. And then what?

If she let him go without being sure that he would keep himself safe, was she a bad person?

On the other hand, there was definitely a thing called "unlawful imprisonment." It was a class E felony. She knew these things. She had dated a lawyer once.

And didn't she owe it to the boy with the big dimples and the hard kiss to make sure that the man with the shattered eyes and the broken heart stayed safe? Sam Winchester had saved her life when she was twenty-four and coming to terms with the fact that she didn't actually know anything about what was real and what wasn't. She had lost a little bit of certainty. He had crashed back into her life after he'd lost everything.

She should balance that a little.

Sarah glanced at the watch on her wrist and startled; she was going to be late, and then her father would glare at her and make some snide remark. Honestly, she was too old to be working for her dad, but what was she going to do about it? She owed it to her mom to stay at the gallery; her parents had started it together with the money that her grandmother had left her dad – her mother had been in it for the art, and her father had been in it for the money, and between the two of them, they had kept the business extremely successful. With her mom gone, Sarah felt like she was the only person in the gallery actually protecting what art meant.

She backed out of her driveway, careful to edge her car around the Impala still parked at her curb. She should look into moving it to the garage, she mused – her across-the-street neighbor, Mrs. McLanahan, was always looking for some excuse to nose into Sarah's personal life, and the fewer people who asked questions about Sam, the better.

"Shoot," she muttered as she wound her way through the town towards the freeway. She'd forgotten coffee. Normally this wouldn't be that big of a deal, but she had been up all night thinking about how the goddamn world had almost ended a couple of times, only to be stopped by a man in her guest room awaiting his own death, and she needed some fucking caffeine. Right before the freeway onramp, she pulled into the little shopping center and headed for the Starbucks. There was a drive-through window on a coffee shop a little ways back down the road, but sometimes you just needed overly-processed cheesecake-coffee with twelve pounds of whipped cream on top.

So it was unorthodox. "Sue me," she muttered as she pushed the door open.

She was running late enough that the usual morning crowd had more or less thinned out, and she ordered her peppermint mocha, something about the arch of her eyebrow daring the barista to say "Oh but it's May; are you sure you want that?" and once she had paid, she wandered off to stand before the window and stare absently out at the street.

She wouldn't be surprised if Sam was gone when she got home that night. It's not like she'd taken any great pains to hide the keys to his car – they were in his sock drawer. The first place she'd thought of, and probably the first place anyone with half a mind would look.

And if he did leave, where would he go? He'd probably just keep driving, like he'd been when she and Keates had found him, and he'd eventually go over the edge of some cliff somewhere, and he'd find the peace he thought he was looking for.

Sarah shivered.

Was she obligated to stop him? Didn't he have the right to decide what to do about his own life? And for God's sake, hadn't he done enough for this stupid planet?

The question stopped her. She didn't know. She _really_ didn't know. She had absolutely no frame of reference to help her understand the stories that he'd told her. Jesus, he'd seen Dean die a hundred times _in one day_. How was she supposed to wrap her head around that? How was she supposed to even begin to understand it?

Yesterday, she'd had a feeling of wading into a lake, with the water too murky for her to see where she was going or how deep she was. Now, she felt the water level slip up over her eyes.

She wanted to help Sam, she did, but… but, God, she was useless. He had been to hell. He had killed parts of himself in order to return to life, only to lose his mind as a result. What was she supposed to do, make him tea and pat him on the back? Was that supposed to be fucking _useful_?

"Ma'am?" someone said, and Sarah jumped before turning around to find the barista eyeing her expectantly. "Your mocha. Have a nice day."

"Oh – thank you." Sarah took the cup, fit the sleeve around it, and strode out the door. _Get it together,_ she scolded herself. _You have a lot to figure out right now, and it'd help if you knew what you were doing with your own life before you figured out what to do with his._

She paid hardly any attention to the road as she drove. In a perfect world, she mused, Sam would finish his degree at Columbia or some shit, and he'd settle down, and start his life over. But if she'd learned anything during the course of the previous day, it was that the world was literally the opposite of perfect. There was no perfect.

Maybe there was no God.

_Whoa_. Sarah shook herself and her fingers curled tighter around the steering wheel. Where the hell had _that _come from?

All right. That was it. Too much. This was too much for her. She couldn't be responsible for Sam. This was too far above her pay grade. She squared her shoulders and guided her car down the offramp. She'd just… she'd just get to her office and think about setting up Sam with a place to go next, but she couldn't keep doing this. It wasn't something she was equipped to handle.

It took exactly two minutes to get from the offramp to the gallery, and during that time Sarah glanced at a clock for the first time all morning. "Oh goddamn," she muttered. 9:37. The gallery opened at 9. Her father expected her at her desk by 8:30 at the very latest.

After completing the most haphazard parking job of her life, she grabbed her coffee and rushed across the parking lot to the side door of the gallery in the hope of avoiding her father, her heels clicking rapidly on the asphalt. Her bag almost slipped off her shoulder as she rummaged through it for her keys, and a few drops of coffee slopped out of the cup and onto her hand as she wrestled the door open. She glanced around the hallway, wary, like her dad might be hiding behind one of the ostentatious lamp fixtures that no client was ever gonna see, or as if he'd pop out from behind the potted ficus plant.

_Ficus is a stupid word_.

Hitching her bag higher, she crept down the hallway, silently cursing the fact that her office was at the opposite end. There hadn't been too many cars in the parking lot – maybe no clients had even come through yet, and she knew she didn't have any showing scheduled–

"Sarah! Good of you to join us!"

She forced the flinch to not show in her face before slowly pivoting to face her father. "Hi, Dad. Sorry I'm late."

"Hmm." He surveyed her, and Sarah fought the urge to reach up and smooth her hair. "Well, I'm pleased that you at least had time to stop for coffee."

There wasn't really a defense that Sarah could give for that one, so she stayed silent. Michael Blake strolled down the hallway towards her, his hands in the pockets of his neatly pressed suit. Sarah had never seen the man wear a wrinkled article of clothing in his life, not even on the day her mother had died. During her science fiction phase when she'd been fourteen, she'd read _The Stepford Wives_ and gone running to her mom almost in tears because "Daddy reminds me of these ladies." Her mother had laughed, and rumpled her hair, and taken her to the library to check out a book that she'd heard a friend's son had enjoyed, even if the son was a few years younger than Sarah. She'd devoured the book, though, and all of its sequels, and her tattered set of Harry Potter books still occupied a place of pride on her bookshelves at home.

Her father came to a halt in front of her and frowned. "You look distracted."

"I'm fine." She was always fine around him, or at least she had been for the past seven years. He'd snapped at her the one time she'd tried to cry with him about her mother, and since then, she checked her emotions at the door whenever he was in the room.

"Hmm." He nodded, then shifted his weight. "We had a crate of appraisals come in this morning. If you'd been here an hour ago, they would probably be finished already."

She opened her mouth, but before she could mutter her non-apology, a clear and deep voice sounded from behind her father. "It's all right, Mr. Blake, I took care of it while you were with Mrs. Abbotts."

Michael turned and grinned at the man leaning up against the wall a few feet away from them, arms folded.

Sarah somehow managed not to roll her eyes. Her father had hired Daniel Ellis about a year ago, called himself lucky to snag Daniel from some pretentious gallery in the Hamptons. He always showed up to work in three-piece suits, all his ties with their perfect Windsor knots complimented his blue eyes, and he was remarkably efficient at his job.

Oh, and her father had wanted her to date him when he'd first joined the gallery.

"_He's a good man, Sarah. And your mother wanted grandchildren. For God's sake, you're almost thirty._"

She'd never forgiven her father for that, and by extension she'd never forgiven Daniel himself. "Great," she said quickly, before her father could speak. "Well, I have a consultation at ten, so I'm just going to go prep for it."

"I'd like you to join me for lunch," Michael said before she could walk away. The arch of his eyebrows told her that what he'd actually like was to scold her like a twelve-year-old for being late, and she was impressed with how quickly she came up with a response.

"I think I should have lunch at my desk, Dad. Make up for the lost hour this morning. Daniel," she added, nodding at him before taking quick steps into her office and shutting the door behind her.

"Ugh." She dropped her bag on one of the two chairs in front of her desk, set her coffee down, and draped her coat over the back of her own chair before raising the blinds on her window. She grabbed her coffee up again and gulped the rest of it down in one go, ignoring the way it almost burned the roof of her mouth. As she lowered the cup, the diploma hanging on her wall caught her eye. _Barnard College: To all persons be it known that Sarah Blake, having completed the prescribed studies and satisfied the requirements for the degree of Bachelor of the Arts in Art History, has accordingly been admitted to that degree with all the rights, privileges, and immunities thereunto appertaining. _

She had wanted Georgetown, but her father had wanted her to be at a school close enough that she could come home on weekends, and it probably didn't help that Barnard was all women. In the end, though, she should be grateful to her dad. Her mom had gotten sick during her junior year, and Sarah had been able to be with her through most of her treatment without falling too far behind in school. Sarah sat down behind her desk and picked up the only framed photo she had displayed: herself and her mother at her college graduation. Even then, if you really looked, you could see the sharper definition in her mom's cheekbones.

After graduation, she'd taken the paid internship she'd gotten with the Met in New York City – it was selective and prestigious and she had a sneaking suspicion that her father had pulled some strings. New York had been great, she'd dated a boy named Courtland, she'd met so many artists, she'd been overdrawn on her bank account twice, and she'd gotten some really cute clothes.

But in January, she'd handed in her notice and gone home. Her mom was getting worse.

Elizabeth Blake held on for six months after that last relapse. Sarah had taken her to the coast, they'd made it a habit of driving through Westchester, they'd spent a few weekends at bed-and-breakfasts in the countryside.

She'd had six months of that. And then it was over, and the funeral was on a Sunday.

Sarah had thought she was prepared to lose her mother, she thought that she had come to terms with what it would mean. She'd been wrong – there was no preparing for it, there was no getting ready.

She had thought that she wanted to die. She had spent a year thinking that, and not doing anything about it, and thinking herself a coward, and hiding herself in a shell. She had cut all contact with her friends, ignored her father like he ignored her, and just stopped _thinking_.

The fact was, though, that she _hadn't _wanted to die, not really.

Sam had made her realize that.

Sarah set the picture frame down and stared out the window.

Sam was back at her house right now, probably fixing up her porch, because she needed his help and had asked him to do it. Because that was how Sam _worked _– even in the one time she'd met him before, he'd encountered an impossible problem, a problem that was really none of his business, one that he was under no obligation to fix, and he and his brother had fixed it anyway. More than that, though, Sam Winchester had taught her something about herself.

This was the man who had fallen into her life exactly when she could have needed him most. This was the man who had accidentally taken her into a state of extreme danger – life-threatening danger – and saved her. But that wasn't it – if it hadn't have been for him, if it hadn't have been for him almost getting her killed, she wouldn't have realized just how much she wanted to live.

So she did owe him.

She took a deep breath and followed the thought around the corner. She owed him, but that wasn't it. Sam Winchester deserved to live. He deserved to live, and he deserved to be happy, and he deserved to have his eyes light up again.

Sarah wanted to be a part of that process.

And it wasn't claiming responsibility for him, necessarily – he had come into her life once, and he had simultaneously put her in danger and helped save her, in more ways than one. That hadn't been him claiming responsibility for her. But he had helped. She wanted to help.

The office phone on her desk beeped, and she jumped before swiveling her chair around to face the front of her desk. She pressed the button for the intercom to connect to Trish, the woman who worked the gallery's front desk. "Yes, Trish?"

"Mr. and Mrs. Barker are here for their consultation," Trish told her, and Sarah asked her to send them back as she quickly straightened up her desk and pulled the client file. She would get back to Sam soon enough. For now, she had a job to at least pretend to do.

She wound up sneaking out of the office early that day, once she was sure that her father would be in meetings with art dealers for the rest of the afternoon. She was almost speeding on the way home, her pulse thrumming just under her skin. She was ready to help, in any way that she needed to.

But what if… what if Sam didn't _want_ her help? What if he'd decided to move on – not just move on, but _move on_? What if he had decided for certain that he just didn't want to keep living anymore?

She wasn't qualified to help him through that. Oh God, she was freaking herself out.

_Breathe_.

Sarah honestly had no idea what to expect when she guided her car back into her own driveway, but the Impala was still sitting at her curb, so that was something. Her steps were slow and hesitant as she made her way to the front door, and as she inserted her key into the lock, she didn't hear the sound of Keates's paws pounding down the hall to meet her. She didn't know what to make of that.

Sarah didn't know what she expected when she slowly made her way into the living room, but the sight of Sam on her sofa, laptop open and Keates at his feet, wasn't it. "Sam?" she said, and when he looked up at her, the intent set of his jaw softened a little, and he gave her half a smile. She exhaled the breath she hadn't known she'd been holding as she fished around for something to say. "Did you… get that porch step done?"

"I did, yeah," he nodded, distractedly glancing back at the laptop screen. "Listen, I'm gonna need my car keys back."

Sarah felt the blood drain from her face. _Oh God, no, please _– she stammered something about _we can work something out_, but he cut her off with wide eyes that reminded her of Keates as a puppy as he shook his head. "What? Oh, God, no, not for _that_," he reassured her, then invited her to sit beside him.

She approached him slowly, kicking off her shoes and curling to take up as little space as possible, like he was a frightened animal she didn't want to startle. "So what's up?" she asked slowly.

He rushed through an explanation of something about a cabin in Montana, like there was a part inside him that was on fire, and she had to stop him to make sure she was hearing him right. He looked startled when she said _we_.

"You don't have to come with me."

She snorted, feeling herself relax a little so that she was sitting cross-legged, rather than wrapping her arms around her legs. "Like I'm gonna let you go alone. Come on," she encouraged, "how much a drive is it going to be?"

It felt like Sam was sizing her up as he answered, and she squared her shoulders and jutted her chin out in response. "Sarah, you have a life here," he reminded her. "A job. Look, you – you've opened up your home for me in a way I have no right to expect." She shook her head, prepared to interrupt, but he talked over her. "You kept me alive for two days. And I'm grateful," he assured her, "but I can't take up any more space in your life."

She frowned; at no point in the last few days had she felt like he was _taking up space_ in her life. It had been… unexpected, to say the least, but out of all the things that she'd felt in relation to him, _inconvenienced_ had not been one of them. She nudged him with her foot. "Sam, come on. I'm sure we've had this conversation before." She stared at him, wondering if he was remembering what she was remembering. _"Look, I'm not saying that I'm not scared, because I am scared as hell… but I'm not going to run and hide either."_ She made sure he was looking her in the eye as she continued. "I can handle this. I _want_ to handle this. I'm in, whatever it takes."

Sam kept studying her, and she held his gaze, exhaling hard when she saw the smile just barely begin to light up his face. "Yeah?" he asked.

Sarah almost laughed. "Yeah. Now let me order a pizza so we can plan this road trip." She stood and patted his shoulder before Keates followed her into the kitchen so she could find the landline and the number of the local pizza joint. Keates followed her out, and without Sam noticing, she slipped her cell phone out of her pocket and texted her father.

_Can't make it in tomorrow, and probably not for the rest of the week either. Personal emergency. I'm sure Daniel can handle anything that needs handling._

She felt a certain sense of smug satisfaction as she powered off her phone and tossed it onto the counter before grabbing the landline to order the pizza before grabbing a couple of beers from the fridge.

"So, Montana?" she asked as she stepped back into the living room and passed him a bottle. "You had… what, a safehouse there?"

"Not us," he corrected, and she noticed that he was still referring to himself as half of himself and Dean. "An older hunter. Rufus. Died about a year ago." A shadow passed across his face, and Sarah bit back the urge to ask how he had died. "But it's a good place, hidden. It kept us safe. Bobby did a pretty good job of making sure he had copies of everything in his library, and we moved pretty much all of them there." He twisted the cap off his beer and raised the bottle to her. "There's got to be something there that'll get me closer to figuring out where Dean is."

"Okay." Sarah nodded and took a sip of her own beer. "So. What's the best route?"

"Almost due east," Sam replied as Keates hopped up on the couch and curled up between them. Sarah didn't have the heart to scold him down as she usually would have done. "It's about twenty-four hundred miles, which Dean and I could do in a little less than a day and a half–"

"What? Wait, really?"

Sam grinned. "Don't worry; I know you'll want to actually stop for the night instead of just switching off drivers like we'd do. If we start really early tomorrow, like _really_ early, we can make it to Minneapolis tomorrow night and find a Holiday Inn or whatever."

"Sounds good," she told him, ignoring the little voice in the back of her head that asked _how early_. "So that has us getting to the cabin, what," she quickly did the math in her head, "late Wednesday?"

Sam nodded. "Does that sound okay?"

"Perfect," she assured him. "How long do you think I should pack for?"

He frowned. "I don't… I don't really have a concept of that – we kind of lived out of the car, we didn't really have a home base." If he noticed how her face twinged in sympathy, he didn't comment. "Um… I guess about a week? We'll stop at a Laundromat if we need to."

"So we should be on the road by… what, five?" she checked, and he nodded. "Okay. Um, I will do laundry now – do you need anything washed?" he said he didn't, and she just raised an eyebrow before going on. "And I'll run to the bank and get some cash–"

"Sarah, I'll cover the expenses." His lips twitched. "I mean… you shouldn't be spending money on _my_ quest."

"I'm ignoring you. Anyway, I'll make sure that we have some blankets to lay out for Keates, and ask a neighbor to keep an eye on the house for me…" she was mostly talking to herself at that point, and she jumped a little when the doorbell rang. She quickly went and paid for the pizza, probably tipping more than she usually would because she was so distracted, and brought it back into the living room. She had to bite her lip, hard, to stop from grinning big at the sight of Sam voluntarily picking up a slice and eating it. "Is there anything else I should take care of?"

He hesitated, then said slowly, "This is gonna sound strange, but bring a business suit. Something in dark colors, if you have it."  
She raised an eyebrow. "Why?"

"In case we have to impersonate FBI agents. I'll make up a badge for you."

Her jaw dropped. "Are you serious?"

He nodded, watching her warily. "Sarah, do you think we can get our usual job done by impersonating art dealers?"

Sarah closed her mouth, then opened it, then closed it again before she answered, "I guess not."

"You okay with this?" he asked her, worry creeping into his voice.

"I'm fine," she reassured him, smiling. "Really. I mean… it's an adventure. I don't get many of those."

After a moment, he grinned back at her. They planned the finer points of the route (or he did, while she watched and munched on her own slice of pizza) before she got up to start a load of laundry and begin packing. Her stomach kept turning over in nerves, but she wasn't… she wasn't _scared,_ she decided. She hadn't been lying when she said she didn't get adventures. She was helping Sam, she was maybe even doing something that would mean more in a bigger context that she didn't really understand, and she was going to be someone other than Sarah Blake, family-employed art dealer, if only for a week or so.

And she was going to help Sam. That mattered. That was definitely something that mattered.

When Sarah went to bed that night, it wasn't yet 8:30, but her alarm was set for 4 a.m., so it was just as well. Her life was changing, she thought as Keates curled up at the end of her bed and radiated warmth into her blanket-covered feet. She'd have never been able to expect anything even remotely like this.

Well, she thought wryly as she rolled over and punched her pillow, she _had_ asked Sam to come back and see her sometime.

"Five in the morning isn't a time," Sarah mumbled as she wrapped the second breakfast burrito up in foil. It was a quick recipe she'd figured out during that one semester of college where she'd had eight AM class and no time for lunch afterwards: eggs, bacon, cheddar, onions, salt, pepper, mushrooms. "It's an emotion. A negative emotion." Keates barked a few times until she relented and slipped him a strip of bacon. Sam huffed a sound that was almost a laugh.

"Yeah, that sounds about right." As Sarah watched, he grabbed a gun – a fucking gun, oh God, she'd forgotten about those – and loaded it before slipping it into the waistband of his jeans at the small of his back. His eyes were lit up in a way that they hadn't been since he'd almost hit her dog, and a part of her was glad to see it. A bigger part was preoccupied with the thought of being in the car with his loaded gun.

"Do you need that to drive?" she asked before she could stop herself.

"What? The gun?" He didn't look angry at the question, and she was glad about that, but the corners of his eyes did tighten with what she now recognized as sadness. "Once Dean and I were driving, and a cop pulled us over for a busted taillight."

"Yeah?" That happened to everyone. She eyed him, waiting for him to continue.

Sam shrugged. "Wasn't a cop. Or I guess it was a cop's body, but a demon was possessing him. We almost died."

Sarah's mouth fell open. "Oh my God."

"Yeah." Sam paused, then turned to fully face her, eyes serious now. "Sarah, are you sure you want in on this? I'm not… being around me tends to get dangerous."

"I told you I'm in," she said, raising her chin and daring him to continue. She'd realized something last night, and she was going to hold herself to that, come hell or high water.

He studied her for another moment, and then nodded. "Okay then. Let's go?"

"Yep." Sarah grabbed the duffel bag she'd left by the front door and stepped outside, Sam and Keates at her heels. She double-locked the door behind them, glancing one last time at the windows, before she followed Sam down the empty driveway to the Impala; they'd moved her car into the garage last night. Sam held out a hand, an expectant eyebrow arched up on his face, and she bit down a giggle before reaching into the pocket of her hoodie and tossing him the keys. He grabbed them out of the air with a muttered word of thanks before unlocking the front and back passenger's side doors. She let Keates into the back as he loaded the bags into the trunk, and then he was sliding into the driver's seat beside her. She handed him one of the wrapped burritos and balanced the thermos of coffee on the bench seat between them as Sam started the engine. The car purred to life, and for a moment Sarah thought she saw a smile flicker across his face.

But then it was gone, and his jaw was set with determination, and they were pulling away from the curb. Sarah watched her house disappear in the rearview mirror as Keates curled up on the backseat to go back to sleep, having had done with the two of them making him get up so early. As they pulled out onto the main road, Sarah made herself stop looking back and asked, "You got any music in this thing?"

Sam hesitated for a moment, then replied, so quietly that she almost missed it over the roar of the engine, "There should be a box of cassette tapes in the glove compartment."

Sarah popped the little door open, and sure enough, a taped-up shoebox full of tapes slid out into her hand. "Blue Oyster Cult?" she muttered, flipping through them. "Nirvana? This is… this is all stuff that my dad mocked my uncle for liking."

"Uh huh," Sam muttered, then said, "if you see a Motorhead one, go ahead and put it on."

"Sure." Sarah opened the case and slid the tape into the player, and unwrapped her burrito as the opening chords sounded. She watched Sam out of the corner of her eye; the music wasn't making him relax any, and it wasn't doing much for her. But then, she suspected that he wasn't playing it for either of them.

And maybe that was okay.

* * *

**Please review for me!**


	5. Chapter 5

**Hello again! As always, thanks to Kerri, who re-watched "Provenance" with me a few nights ago. It was hard.**

After about an hour, the silence got oppressive. Granted, it wasn't really silence, because there was mullet rock coming out of the speakers and Keates occasionally huffing in the back seat, but Sarah was still acutely aware of the fact that Sam wasn't saying anything, and so she kept rattling around in her head searching for something to say. She kept subtly watching Sam (and all right, she expected that she wasn't that subtle about it): the way he kept his hands firmly at two and ten on the wheel, how he didn't rev the engine, how he always allowed other cars the right of way on the highway.

She knew enough (and she didn't know much, really) to be aware of the fact that the car was incredibly important to him. You only had to see the way his fingers sort of cradled the steering wheel, watch how gentle he was with the pedals, to realize that. "Tell me about the car," she said suddenly, her voice jarring against the harsh background of Lemmy Kilmister.

"This car?" Sam glanced at her, eyebrows slightly raised. She just nodded expectantly, willing them to get past the awkwardness of the initial question, and after a moment he shrugged and answered. "It's… one of the most permanent aspects of my life. I've probably spent more time in it than in… any room anywhere."

Sarah schooled herself to keep her face blank – if she had learned anything over the last few days, it was that showing surprise or sympathy or in any way reacting to the fact that what he had lived _was not sane_ would get him to clam up like no other.

Sam went on, "My dad bought this car when he got back from Vietnam, before he married my mom. He gave it to Dean when Dean turned eighteen, and Dean started teaching me to drive when I turned fourteen a few months later." Sam shrugged. "She's a good car. She's never let us down."

"She?" Sarah asked, smiling a little.

Sam made that huffing laugh sound again. "Yeah. I don't know. Dean calls her 'Baby.'"

Sarah could almost picture it: Dean a rebellious James Dean-wannabe eighteen-year-old with spiked-up hair sitting where she was now, and Sam all angles and out-of-control limbs at fourteen, in the driver's seat, nervously chewing on his bottom lip, trying not to stomp on the gas pedal. "So what state is your first license from?"

"Um… God, where were we when I turned sixteen…." Sam took a hand off the steering wheel to run it through his hair. "Oh – Nebraska. Little town off I-80 called Lexington. I took the test the weekend before my AP exams started. I think we still might – oh, never mind."

"What's up?"

Sam rolled his shoulders against the seat. "I was about to say that we might still have that license somewhere, because it's an awful picture and Dean loved to give me shit about it, but… I took it to Stanford with me, and it must have burned in the apartment."

"The night Jessica died?" Sarah asked quietly.

"Yeah." Sam cleared his throat. "So, who taught you to drive?"

Sarah let the subject change happen. She turned to look out the window as she let the memory form in her head. This particular stretch of I-84 was cut into the slope of a gentle hill, and now in may it was lush with shrubbery – she imagined it would be a lovely emerald green color as soon as the sun came up behind them. "My mom taught me," she answered. "I almost wrecked the station wagon a couple of times, but I had it down after six or so months." She laughed. "Or at least I thought I did. I failed the first time."

"Yeah? Why?"

"I didn't check my blind spots at a left-hand turn, but that was because there was literally no one else at the intersection," she defended. "I'm still bitter about it, because it meant that I couldn't drive myself to a party that was happening that weekend. "

Sam half-smiled. "Such a hardship."

"It was!" Sarah huffed. "There was gonna be this cute boy there, Rodd Taylor, and my friend Corissa had told me that he thought I was cute, and–"

Sam glanced at her, smiling for real now. "And what? Were you hoping for Seven Minutes in Heaven or something?"

"Stop teasing me," she snapped to hide the fact that she was almost giddy with the fact that he _was_ teasing her, he was making jokes. "He was really cute, okay?"

"So you were… what, sixteen?" Sam was outright _smirking_ now, and Sarah curled her arms around her middle. "You were one of those girls in high school who was everybody's best friend, weren't you? Everyone fell in love with you at least once–"

"Not at all! I was a dork," Sarah protested. "I had my little quiet group of friends – we were mostly kids who had been the new kid at some point, or we didn't have any brothers or sisters, or something like that. We were the lonely kids."

Sam tuned to face her, and she couldn't name what she saw in his face, but his eyes were soft and his voice was quiet, like a still pool. "We would have been friends in high school, wouldn't we?"

She met his eyes for a long moment, and inclined her head.

"Were you, like, a perpetual new kid?" she asked, and when he nodded, she went on, "What's the longest you stayed in one place?"

His hands were in his hair again, and now his eyes were far away. "My senior year of high school. Dean… Dean was helping me apply to colleges, and he did his damndest to make it as easy as possible on me. He convinced dad to rent us this tiny studio apartment in Indiana, and he got a day job at a garage but still worked jobs with Dad sometimes… just so I could be consistent on my applications with my mailing address and with my AP scores. He took me on a handful of campus tours, too."

Sarah watched him as he spoke, trying to ignore the needles prickling at the back of her eyes.

Sam placed his other hand back on the wheel. "We didn't tell Dad. Dean gave me pretty much his whole fucking paycheck for a month for my application fees. He was… he was proud of me the day that we mailed my letter of intent to Stanford."

"Of course he was," Sarah murmured. Not only had she grown up with a mother who had made sure that she knew what college was before she even knew what high school was, but she'd seen how Dean was with Sam – of course he'd been proud.

Sam went on as if he hadn't heard her. "I know that the night I left was the worst night of Dean's life. Dad said terrible things, and I said terrible things… and then I was out the door and Dad was telling me not to come back, and then Dean came after me, and… I said terrible things to him too, Sarah, and I asked him to come with me, and he said no, but… but he could give me a ride to the bus station."

Sarah sucked in a breath.

"And I missed him _every day_," Sam said, his voice so hoarse now. The sun still wasn't fully up, so his face was wrapped in shadows. "I never got used to being somewhere that he wasn't. He was my best friend. He raised me. He – God. I just never got used to it." Sam inhaled, like he was trying to steady himself.

"And then he was back, and I wanted to be pissed that he was taking me away from this whole life I'd had to build without him… and then Jessica died, and–" Sam's breath hitched "–and he was the only one I trusted to just be there with me, and he thinks I don't remember this, but – that night I cried myself almost to sleep, and when I was exhausted, when I was just lying there, he – he sat on the edge of my bed and he hummed 'Hey Jude.' I didn't find out until about two years ago that it was our mom's favorite song, and he remembered her singing it to him."

"Oh, Sam."

The sound of Sarah's voice, even quiet as it was, seemed to jolt Sam back to the car and the highway and the early morning. "Sorry," he muttered. "Didn't mean to dump on you."

"Don't you dare – don't you _dare _apologize," she hissed, her hands balling into fists in her lap. "Sam, thank you for sharing that with me, but don't you dare apologize."

After a moment he faced her, studied her, for longer than was probably safe while he was driving, but before either of them could speak, they rounded a bend, and the sun rose behind them.

They were heading west and the sun was at their backs, so it didn't hurt to look forward, but Sarah's eyes widened as she saw the way the golden light drenched the hills before them. It didn't brighten the view, it didn't make it feel clean, but it shifted the landscape, changed it.

Beside Sarah, Sam relaxed and pushed down just a little harder on the gas pedal as he tilted the rearview mirror to deflect the worst of the glare.

Sarah reached for the thermos of coffee, screwed the cap off, and took a sip. Sam held out his hand, and she passed the thermos to him as she kept watching the gilded landscape flash by.

Two more hours into the drive, Keates had woken up, and Sam had pulled over to let him run through a field and possibly do his business, and when Keates had gotten back to the car, Sam had cranked down a window in the back seat to allow Keates to stick his head out into the breeze. Which was what he was doing just then, as Sam and Sarah played a strange trade-off version of twenty questions. Sarah wasn't really sure how it had started, or what exactly in the conversation had led them here, but it seemed to her as if what Sam had confessed to her had undone some knot in his throat, and now he wanted to talk about parts of his life that would seem trivial but really, really weren't, and at the same time he wanted to learn as much about her as possible.

It was strange, in a way. Sam had saved Sarah's life, and Sarah had saved Sam's, and they had shared a kiss six years ago, and he had almost killed her dog but hadn't, and he had spent three nights in her house, and they really knew nothing at all about each other.

"Okay," Sam laughed, resting his left elbow on the window's edge. "Most embarrassing moment in high school. Preferably within the school itself."

"Oh God, really?" Sarah groaned, leaning back into her seat and pressing her hands over her face.

Sam grinned over at her and, Jesus, _dimples_, he was smiling big enough to show his goddamn dimples. "Yes, really. You got to hear about the time I got wailed on in middle school–"

"That story ended with Dean beating up a bunch of fourteen-year-olds and no one messing with you for the rest of the time you were at that school!" Sarah protested. "It can't have been that embarrassing in the long run."

Sam shrugged. "Fair. Now answer the question."

"_Fine._" Sarah groaned, folding her arms across her stomach. "Okay. So. There was this boy–"

"Is this the same boy from the seven minutes in heaven party?"

"No, God, shut up – his name was Jason something, and–"

"Sarah, how many boys were there in high school?"

"What, like it matters?" she retorted, and Sam raised his free hand in surrender. "If you want me to get through this story, shove it, Winchester." She waited, eyebrows raised, and eventually Sam mimed locking his lips shut, mouth twitching to fight off a smile. Satisfied, Sarah went on, "So on this one day, my mom packed me something really heavy and cheesy for lunch, I don't remember what it was, and my friend Mary told me that Jason wanted to talk to me before we had to go back to class. So I like bolted down my food and rushed off to meet him behind the gym–"

"Of course it was behind the gym, this just keeps getting better and better–"

"_Shut your face, Sam._ And when I got there he was leaning up against the building with his hands in the pockets of his jacket, obviously trying to look cool, and he was like 'hey,' and I tried to keep calm and I was like 'hey back,' and then he pulls out a pack of cigarettes and offers me one."

"Oh shit," Sam groaned, laughing a little. "And let me guess, you'd never smoked before."

"Of course I hadn't. But I wanted to impress him, so I took it and held it like I'd seen in movies, and let him light it for me, and I took way too deep of a first puff, and I shit you not, I started coughing so hard that I vomited up my lunch–"

Sam sniggered and glanced over her, eyes wide. "Did any of it get on his shoes?"

Sarah rolled her eyes. "Of course some of it got on his shoes. How else would this story end?"

"That's fantastic," Sam muttered, still grinning. "All right, fine. Your turn."

Sarah bit down on her lip and stared at the road stretching out before them as she thought. They were in Pennsylvania now, the part that involved nothing but rolling hills and, this time of year, bright green bushes. As they flashed by, she reminded herself not to ask anything too deep, or too personal, or Sam might clam up on her. But, she thought, glancing over at him, he hadn't clammed up yet. "Favorite birthday?" she asked eventually.

"Hmm." Sam had, so far, taken every single one of these questions seriously, his eyes took on the same thoughtful look each time, he shifted in his seat, and if it was one that he thought deserved special consideration, he'd run his hands through his hair. This was apparently one of those questions, and Sarah watched as Sam's fingers shifted the overlong hair around, and then made another pass to get it out of his face. After a moment, he answered, "Eighth." Sarah waited a moment, and eventually Sam elaborated. "It was second grade, and Dean was twelve, so that was the year Dad started to take him on hunts."

Sarah bit back a horrified squeak. _Twelve years old, with ghosts and monsters and shit, for God's sake _ —

"And I was staying with Bobby so I could go to school in Sioux Falls for a few months, and the night before my birthday Dad called and said that they wouldn't be able to make it home until the following weekend, and I didn't say anything about my birthday because _Dad_ didn't say anything about my birthday, but Bobby knew I was upset, so we watched a couple of movies and he gave me pancakes for dinner, and then I went to bed."

Sam paused, and Sarah watched as a smile just barely twitched up the corners of his mouth.

"By then Dean and I had a kind of tradition going where we'd stay up until midnight the night before our birthdays, so I was in our room, reading, waiting for midnight just 'cause, and then midnight happened and the bedroom door was open, and Dean was there."

"Really?" Sarah asked, smiling too.

"Yeah, he – he just came in, and started to sing happy birthday to me before I kind of tackled him in a hug," Sam remembered, and Sarah's heart clenched at the look on his face. "And then he made me get back in bed, and I asked him to tell me about the hunt, and he did until I fell asleep. And the next morning – my birthday is in May, so it's like the very start of county fair season – we got Dad to take us a couple towns over to this tiny corn festival. Dean and I went on all the shitty rides, and he let me eat too much cotton candy. I puked."

Sarah burst out laughing. "Is the theme of this road trip going to be vomit? Good thing neither of us gets carsick."

"In my defense, I was eight and not doing anything illegal at the time. And does Keates get carsick?" Sam asked, glancing over his shoulder.

"Eh, he seems okay." Sarah reached behind her to scratch at Keates's flank – she couldn't get to his head because it was still out the back window. "How you doing, friend?"

Keates barked and pulled his hand back in, only to scramble around on the backseat and flop his head over the front seat so it rested between Sam and Sarah's shoulders. Sarah scooted around so she could scratch both her hands on either side of his face. "Yeah, you're doing just fine, aren't you?"

Sam smiled over at the pair of them. "How old is he?"

"Three and change." Sarah rubbed down the sides of Keates's neck. "He's a rescue. I adopted him when I bought my house and moved out of my apartment, because I could finally have a pet that didn't need a ten-gallon fish tank."

Keates barked, agreeing with her story, before nudging her cheek with his nose and retreating into the backseat and again hanging his head out the window. Sarah poked Sam's shoulder. "Your turn with the questions."

Sam shook a few strands off his forehead and out of his eyes. Sarah knew his hair was being blown around by the two open windows in the backseat, but he hadn't even glanced back at them, hadn't for a moment suggested that they roll the glass up. "Tell me about your best friend," he said, and Sarah raised her eyes in surprise.

"Well… her name is Erin Conley. Or it was. Now it's Erin Farmington. I was a bridesmaid." Sarah thought about reaching into her pocket and pulling up photos on her phone, but that would involve turning her phone on, which she hadn't done since she had texted her father. "We met in college?"

"Was she your roommate?" Sam asked. Sarah thought she saw something in his face stiffen, but it smoothed before she could think about it too much.

"No, but my roommate Kristi and I were hanging out in the dorm lounge a few days after move-in freshman year, and Erin storms in and drops down on the couch in between us and says, 'It's day three and she's already putting vodka in our fridge.' And Kristi and I just kind of looked at her, and she looked at both of us, and says, 'shouldn't she at least have the decency to wait until after the RA's calm down?'"

"Oh my god," Sam muttered, passing a hand over his face to hide his smile.

Sarah went on, "And Kristi didn't know what to say, but I felt like Erin just wanted to do something quintessentially freshman, so I said, 'Wanna go get ice cream?' and she said 'I like you.' and we kind of never looked back."

"And the rest is history?" Sam prompted.

"She was a finance major, and I was studio art before I was art history, so we really shouldn't have gotten along," Sarah told him. "But we wound up moving into an apartment with like six other girls because that's the only way you afford an apartment in New York, and she wound up falling in love with a boy at Columbia, and he was also something sort of businessy, and now the two of them live in Washingtonville, which is about twenty minutes away from Montgomery. They started their own tiny accounting firm. I'm their kid's godmother."

"Yeah?"

Sarah nodded proudly. "His name is Liam. He's three." She shifted on the seat.

"You want to stop and take a walk?" Sam offered.

She was about to accept, but something flashed in her eyes. He didn't want to stop. He wanted to keep going. He'd already lost three days, three days had already passed for Sam without Dean in the world. That was unacceptable. And it was perfectly fine for them to tease and joke with each other, as long as they were moving forward, as long as he could feel himself getting closer by inches to the possibility of getting Dean back.

"No," she heard herself say, ignoring the way the stiffness in her back protested. "I'm good."

He looked unconvinced, but he didn't argue. Instead, all he said was, "We're about two hours away from Youngstown, just on the other side of the Ohio border. There's a diner there that does a really good burger. Sound okay?"

"Sounds great." She smiled over at him. "Doesn't it, Keates?" she added, craning her neck back to try and see him. A sound that might have been his woof sounded from outside the car, and Sam grinned. Sarah settled back in her seat, convinced that her back could handle another couple hundred miles.

"I don't understand how you've never had a heart attack," Sarah muttered as she glanced over the diner's menu. They weren't actually in Youngstown, but rather in a much smaller town a few miles past it, and Keates hadn't been allowed inside. He was having the time of his life, though, his leash tied to a parking meter right in front of the window where Sam and Sarah were seated inside, making friends with everyone who passed him on the sidewalk.

Sam shrugged. "Lot of physical activity, doing what we do." He hadn't even opened his menu, but rather was watching her. Sarah blushed and glanced back down, deciding on an omelet at random before closing the plastic-encased pages. It was only eleven, so they'd been handed breakfast menus, and Sarah couldn't bring herself to mind. This was such an innocuous moment, and Sam's life had probably been full of moments like these – late morning sun streaming in through a plate-glass window with the diner name painted on it, the bustle of the fry cooks beyond the counter, the hum of the locals' conversation around them, his arm extended along the back of the booth across from her, his phone out on the table, just in case. But it was entirely new to her. It was eleven in the morning on a Tuesday, and she was sitting in a diner with a man she still didn't know as well as she would like, but now knew better, across the table from her, with her dog as happy as a clam outside.

The waitress (who, Sarah was amazed to see, looked exactly like a waitress at such a restaurant could be expected to look: in her forties with her hair up in a bun and bright blue shadow on her eyelids) wandered up to their table and pulled out a pad and pencil. "What can I get you kids?"

Sam nodded at Sarah, and the waitress turned to her, so Sarah cleared her throat and tried not to sound flustered when she said, "The garden omelet, please, and can I get the side of sausage in a to-go box?"

"He yours?" asked the waitress with a grin, nodding out the window at Keates, who was currently getting loved on by a little girl who looked about six as her mother watched, smiling. When Sarah nodded, the waitress noted a double order of sausage on her pad with a wink. "And you, Stretch?" she asked, turning to Sam.

"Can I get the scrambled eggs with hash browns and bacon, and a side of fruit?" he asked, and Sarah though about how the words had kind of rolled off his tongue, like he'd said them hundreds of times, in diners all across the country.

They ate quickly (Sarah knew Sam wanted to get back on the road), but still continued their altered version of Twenty Questions as best they could. Sarah learned that Sam had decided to declare a pre-law major after reading _To Kill a Mockingbird_, that his favorite color was blue and Dean's was red, and that the only time he'd ever had a broken bone was when a revenant messed up his wrist on a hunt a few months after he'd said goodbye to her that first time. In turn, she told him that her favorite artistic movement was pointillism, that she had once been the Virgin Mary in a church nativity play, and that she had thought she'd wanted to be a criminology major for about two seconds.

Once they had finished and Sam had paid, they walked outside into the sun and Sarah knelt down to give Keates his sausage. As he barked happily, Sam said, "Listen, there's a gas station a few blocks back, but there's a park on the corner. Do you mind taking Keates there while I fill up the car? I'll swing by to get you when I'm done."

"Sounds good," she nodded, and he half-smiled at her before striding back to the curb where he'd parked. "C'mon, Keates," Sarah muttered to the dog as he scarfed down the last of the sausage. She undid the leash and led him to the grassy stretch beside the playground, and as he bounded around, chasing a squirrel, she sighed. She should really turn her phone back on.

She dug it out of her pocket and powered it on, and it rested in her palm for a brief moment before vibrating violently. She watched the missed calls count climb up to seven while sixteen text messages rolled in. a few were from her father, of course, but more were from Erin. "Damn," Sarah muttered. Her father must have called Erin when he couldn't get ahold of Sarah. She decided her father could stew for a little longer, steeled herself, and without bothering to listen to any voicemails or read any texts, she called Erin.

Her friend picked up a quarter of the way through the first ring. "Sarah Katherine Blake, where the holy _fuck_ are you?"

"Ohio," Sarah said sheepishly. "Let me explain–"

"_Ohio_? Damn straight you're going to explain," Erin stuttered, her voice rising in pitch. Sarah could almost see her running a hand through her frosted blonde hair. "Do you think I _enjoy_ getting calls from your father, demanding to know where you are, as if I've somehow kidnapped you? I drove out to your house earlier, Sarah, and your car is in the garage but you and Keates are gone? Someone's been sleeping in your guest room? What the hell is going on?"

"Sam Winchester came back," Sarah blurted, and Erin abruptly fell silent. Out of all of Sarah's friends, Erin was the only one who had heard the story of the boy who had breezed into town riding shotgun in a muscle car, who had wrapped his arms around her waist and kissed her, and said he'd come back and see her sometime.

When Erin spoke again, she asked the question slowly. "The same Sam Winchester…"

"Yeah, the same."

"And… what? He asked you to run away with him?"

"Not exactly," Sarah said hesitantly, watching as the Impala rumbled into the parking lot adjacent to the playground, and as Keates gave a happy yip when Sam stepped out of the car. "I mean, I offered. He just… he had something devastating happen to his family, and he happened to be passing through Montgomery, and I… offered to help him sort it out."

"What aren't you telling me?" Erin demanded.

"I'm not at liberty to tell you anything else," Sarah said flatly as Keates bounded past her towards Sam, who smiled and knelt down to greet him. "I would if I could. But I trust him, Erin, and I think he's safe. Keates likes him."

"Well, that's something," Erin muttered. "When are you coming home?"

"I don't know. Maybe not for a week or so."

"A fucking _week_?"

"I know it seems excessive," Sarah soothed. "But I'm okay. I am."

The line was silent for so long that Sarah thought the call had been dropped, but eventually Erin sighed. "Well, there's not much I can do from here, is there?" Without waiting for an answer, she plowed on, "You will check in with me every day, do you understand? Or I swear to God I will file a missing persons report. If not a phone call, then a text, Sarah. You can do that for me."

"Scout's honor," Sarah promised.

"Good." Erin sighed. "Just… Sarah, promise me you know what you're doing."

Sam reached behind himself to open the door of the Impala and took out a bottle of water. He unscrewed the cap, then tossed it aside and gently cupped Keates's face so he could hold him steady as he poured the water into the dog's mouth, a look of acute concentration on his face.

"Yeah," Sarah said softly as she watched. "I think I do."


	6. Chapter 6

**Hello again! And thanks to Kerri and Fiona for putting up with the particular kind of strange I get while writing**

* * *

The rest of the day's drive had been more or less uneventful, if you could categorize Sarah seeing some of the most beautiful scenery she'd ever passed in her life as uneventful. She has commented on it more than once, and Sam had smiled at her as she pulled her phone back out and switched it to airplane mode before taking dozens of pictures out the passenger's side mirror. She had told him about her phone call with Erin, and he had been more than okay with it. "Yeah, someone should know who you are. There's any number of ways that this could go wrong, and someone should be looking out for you."

Sarah had shrugged. "I trust you to look after me," she'd said simply, and had shut him down when he'd tried to protest. For some reason, she kept insisting that Sam was a safe person for her to be around, like she hadn't heard him tell her everything that had happened in the last seven years. His whole life was basically a catalogue of ways that he wasn't safe to be around. Didn't she get that?

He glanced at her as she tied her hair up in a messy knot on top of her head. The sun was directly overhead and summer was coming, so they had all the windows down, and had decided to turn off the music because the highway was so much louder and more crowded now that they were passing Toledo. Air conditioning had never been a reliable thing in the Impala; it hadn't even been original to the car, and Dean had installed it a few months before Sam had left for Stanford.

In fact, Sam had been seeing flashes of that last summer before he'd gone away to school all day in the road around him. He and Dean hadn't talked about how Sam was leaving soon, hadn't talked about how Dad still didn't know, hadn't talked about how they didn't know when Sam would next come home, hadn't talked about the fact that after eighteen years of falling asleep listening to each other breathing, they were going to be in two separate worlds. So they had spent almost the entire month of July on the road – not working cases, or going anywhere in particular, but just driving. They'd hit Mount Rushmore, they'd gone on the rides at the North Pier in Chicago, and Sam had even managed to talk Dean into lying on the beach of Madeline Island off Lake Superior. Dean had spent the whole month giving Sam last-minute tips on anything he thought was important, from how to pick up girls to keeping wards secure in his dorm without civilians noticing to checking his limits while drinking. They'd actually been along this stretch of I-80 a good three or four times, and Sam couldn't help but remember himself and his brother barreling down the deserted highway at three in the morning, AC/DC shrieking through the speakers, while Sam and Dean screamed the lyrics of "Back in Black" as loud as they could.

"I forgot that Ohio was a swing state," Sarah said idly, twisting her hand where it was resting a few inches over the sill of the window, cupping the air whooshing by the car. Sam shook himself back to the present and glanced up at the Romney/Ryan billboard they were whizzing past, the third one in the last hour.

"I forgot it was an election year," he said honestly. "Dean and I don't vote."

"Yeah?" Sarah asked, shifting from where she was reclined against the back of the seat to look at him.

Sam shrugged. "We're legally dead, Dean's a serial killer, and I'm a domestic terrorist. We can't exactly waltz into a DMV and register. But I kind of accidentally got big into politics during college."

"The 2004 election?" Sarah asked. "That was the fall after I'd finished undergrad."

"The election cycle was the spring of my sophomore year to the fall of my junior year, yeah. I didn't really care about politics until my constitutional law professor told me that I had the right kind of mind for campaigning, and I should look into both Bush and Kerry. And somehow I wound up devoting ten months of my life to the Kerry campaign," Sam told her, smiling a little. "It was intense. But like I'm a tall white dude, so people listened to me. We ran a hell of a campaign."

"I can definitely see that," Sarah told him, smiling. "The pre-law program was probably in super tight with the political science department at Stanford, wasn't it?"

"Pretty much. I got class credit for the campaign until they put me on salary. I made some good friends. I met Senator Kerry once, actually. He's a good man. He would have made a good president."

Sarah stretched. "And here we are, eight years later. He's now the seniormost senator out of Massachusetts because Teddy Kennedy is dead, you're a dead domestic terrorist, and a black man and a Mormon are running for president. Who would have thought?"

Sam half-laughed at that, and he saw Sarah smile to herself, pleased with his reaction. He knew she was pleased with him appearing to loosen up, and she was definitely helping him stay sane, stay focused. And they were halfway to the cabin, now, and Sam's skin kept itching, because they were almost there, and he was gonna get Dean out, or he was gonna know Dean was happy, and this as something he could fix. It wasn't going to be like last time, with Ruby and Lucifer and the whole mess. It wasn't. He wasn't as alone as he'd been last time.

"How soon is Keates gonna need a bathroom break?" Sam asked.

Sarah, who was flipping through the box of tapes again, shrugged. "He should be good for another hour or so. When do you see us landing in Minnesota? Sometime around ten?"

"Nine thirty local time," Sam corrected, "but yeah, it'll feel like ten."

Sarah set the box aside and stared at him. "How do you keep that straight?" she demanded.

"Years of practice, I guess."

Sarah considered that for a moment, and then nodded, accepting.

Sam had never been on anything that could be viewed as a road trip with anyone except Dean or their father. There had been day trips by bus with friends in college, or they'd driven out three hours to visit someone's family in central California. So he didn't really have a frame of reference for deciding how well Sarah was holding up, but she had fallen quiet somewhere after their stop for dinner, and since Keates had gone back to sleep, Sam hadn't put the music back on. He knew Sarah couldn't be happy just then, sitting in the same bench seat for hours at a time, with the light of the setting sun streaming in through the windshield and turning the cabin a faded red. She hadn't grown up with it the way that Sam had, she had a lifetime to get used to it.

"I'm sorry," he muttered, breaking the silence that had stretched for the last hundred miles or so.

Sarah looked up at him, startled. "For what?"

"This." Sam gestured vaguely around the car. "I know this isn't ideal for you, and I just–"

"I don't remember you holding the gun to my head and forcing me to come with you," she said tartly. "I mean, it's not great, but it's what it takes to get there."

Sam hesitated, and then offered, "we can get you on a plane in Minneapolis, if you want. Get you and Keates back home."

"What? No!" Sarah protested, sitting up straight and turning her body to face him. "No, Sam, I told you that I was in, and I meant it. I'm not–"

"But if this isn't what you signed up for–"

"Sam, it's okay. I'm not going to leave you." She reached out and placed her hand gently on his shoulder.

Sam forced himself to breathe in slowly through his nose, and after a moment he released the breath on a sigh. He remembered the words, of course he did. He remembered where he'd been the last time he'd heard them. Beside him, Sarah's eyes were wide and hazel and sincere, and he sighed. The last time he had made a decision for a girl about whether or not she could handle being a part of a hunter's life, she had burned on the ceiling.

"Okay," he heard himself saying. "We're still a few hours out of Minneapolis, if you want to try and sleep until then."

"Good call. But wake me up if you… need anything. Or whatever."

"Or whatever," Sam echoed, and watched from the corner of his eye as she dug around in the handbag on the floor of the passenger's side and pulled out her phone. She hooked up her headphones, popped them into her ears, and placed her bundled-up sweatshirt between her upper back and the door of the car as a pillow. She shut her eyes and settled in, and within ten minutes her breathing had evened out. As she relaxed in sleep, her knees unbent a little, until her bare feet were pressed up against Sam's thigh.

He didn't mind.

Sarah's nap was relatively peaceful for the last three hours on the road. At one point, Keates had woken up, poked his head over the back of the front seat, gently nudged her cheek with his nose, huffed in satisfaction, given Sam a doggy smile, and gone back to sleep. If nothing else, Sam had lucked out with travel companions.

He hadn't been to Minneapolis in years, and he barely remembered it from last time. It had been before Stanford, and other things more important to him than this city had changed, so he supposed it wasn't surprising that he didn't note the differences as well as he could have. Dean had always been better at that stuff anyway. Sam smiled to himself. Every year during Vegas week, without fail, Dean had managed to find a new wing of a new casino in the city, or a new strip club (Vegas week was the only time that Dean was ever successful getting Sam to go with him to one of those places, because the argument "Dammit Sammy we're supposed to take one week a year to be complete morons and for you that means going to a strip club so just indulge me" carried far too much weight), or a new historically inaccurate landmark and would drag Sam to it.

Actually, Sam mused as he pulled into the parking lot of the Holiday Inn, last year they'd passed through Minneapolis on their way to Vegas week, so it wasn't technically true that he hadn't been here recently. They just hadn't stopped. He cut the engine and leaned over to Sarah. "Hey," he stage-whispered, not wanting to startle her. "You wanna wake up really fast?" When Sarah's only response was to grunt and swat at him, Sam smiled and took her hand. "Sarah. _Sarah_. We're here."

"Wha–" Sarah snorted awake and blinked blearily as she stared around. "Huh?"

"We're here," Sam repeated, releasing her hand and sitting back so that she could pull herself back upright. "We have to go check in. remember, when I called in earlier, I told them that we're siblings and our last name is Harrison."

"Is Keates still Keates?" she mumbled, rubbing a fist across her eyes.

"Yeah," Sam told her, opening his door. "You want to grab him while I get the bags?"

Sarah mumbled something that might have been "sure," but she got out of the car and opened up the back door to wake up the dog. By the time they entered the lobby, she was fully herself again, and Keates was shuffling along beside her like he was irritated with the pair of them, but not enough to do anything about it. Sam held the door for both of them, then followed them in, inhaling the cheerfully sterile smell that came with chain hotels.

"Hi," he greeted the woman at the desk. "Double room for Harrison?"

She gave him a professional smile before clacking something into her keyboard, which apparently told her something she liked. "With the dog?" she checked, glancing down at where Keates was sitting at Sarah's side. "And may I have a credit card for incidentals, Mr. Harrison?"

"Sure." Sam fished the card out of his wallet, quickly making sure that it had the right name stamped into it, and handed it over. After a little more clacking, she handed it back, along with two key cards. "You have room five twenty-one. Continental is from eight to ten in the morning."

Sam thanked her, not bothering to say that they'd be gone by then, and hitched his duffel higher on his shoulder before turning back to Sarah and Keates, handing the former one of the key cards and patting the latter on the head. They crossed the lobby to the elevators, Keates sniffing at the potted plants as they passed by, and once they were in an elevator, Sarah leaned back against the wall and let her eyes drift shut.

"Long day," Sam said sympathetically. "Sorry. We shouldn't be on the road for as long tomorrow."

"That's good to hear," Sarah murmured, opening one eye to peek at him with a half-smile. "I don't know how you do it."

Sam shrugged as the elevator dinged open. "You can get used to almost anything," he told her, standing back to let her out onto their floor. He followed her down the hallway to their room and opened the door for her, before flicking on the lights and slipping past her to claim the bed closest to the door. "Go ahead and take the shower first."

"Oh – thanks," Sarah stuttered as Sam knelt down beside Keates and unbuckled his collar. Keates barked in thanks before trotting over to the doggy bed the hotel had provided, kneading it into shape with his paws, and curling up, promptly forgetting about the two humans in the room in the process. Sarah dug around in her bag for her pajamas and scuttled past Sam into the bathroom, shutting the door behind her with a sharp click.

Sam pulled his phone out of his pocket and put it on charge. They were more than halfway there by now, and that was great, but this was the fourth day gone. If Dean was in hell… Sam did the math. If Dean was in hell where he had been in hell after Lilith's hellhounds had gotten him, he'd been there for sixteen months already. And that was horrific. But if it wasn't bad enough, if Dean had somehow wound up in the cage, and if Sam's memory of how time passed in the cage was right, then Dean had been there for over eleven years now.

And God only knew how time passed in purgatory.

Sam sank down onto his bed and buried his face in his hands. What were they doing, why were they stopping, they needed to fucking get moving, they had to get back on the road –

The bathroom door clicked open and Sarah stepped out in grey cotton pants and the hoodie she'd been wearing this morning, smiling half a smile and saying, "It's all yours."

Sam just looked at her for a moment. She was _exhausted_, poor woman, and she deserved a bed and an uninterrupted eight hours. She deserved to be at home, actually, safe in her house with her dog and her life, and she definitely didn't deserve to be uprooted and taken advantage of and forced back on the road when she had already given up so much to help him.

She'd saved his life.

She'd kept him alive, and because of that, now he could try and save Dean.

Somewhere, he found a smile for her. "Thanks." He grabbed his own stuff and retreated into the bathroom, leaving her wondering at his hesitation.

When he emerged again, showered and dressed in flannel pants and the charcoal-grey hoodie that had never let him down, all the lights were off except for the lamp between the two beds. Sarah was curled up tight on herself under the blankets, her face barely visible between the overstuffed pillows and the down comforter. Sam smiled to himself before setting his phone on charge, programming the alarm for five the next morning, climbing into bed, and shutting off the light.

Sam considered it an accomplishment that he'd only had one nightmare, had managed to not be screaming in terror when he'd woken up, had managed to not disturb Sarah, and had managed to fall back asleep for a few hours afterwards. But when his alarm went off at five the next morning and Sarah shoved the duvet back from her face and blearily blinked awake, she took one look at Sam and her eyes narrowed.

"How'd you sleep?" she asked, but it didn't sound like a question. Sam just shrugged and grabbed his clothes before heading into the bathroom.

When he got out, Sarah was dressed for the day and sitting cross-legged on the floor, feeding Keates some of the dog treats she'd packed. Sam took a moment to just watch them. The words 'thank you' bubbled up in his throat, but he knew that Sarah didn't want to hear them. So instead, all he said was, "So what did you want to do for breakfast?"

Sarah shrugged as she looked up. "We can just stop at a coffee shop and grab something to go. I'm not picky. How long are we going to be on the road today?"

Sam sat down on the edge of his bed as Keates shook himself upright and wandered over to Sam to rest his head on Sam's knee. Sam dropped a hand to Keates's ears as he answered, "About the same distance, but I can speed a little bit. North Dakota doesn't care as much about speed limits. Montana's pretty good too."

Sarah shook her head and muttered something about "How do you even keep that straight in your head" before she stood and scooped up her own things and headed for the bathroom. As the door clicked shut behind her, Keates gave a quiet "woof" and hopped up onto the bed beside Sam, rolling onto his back and raising his eyebrows in a look that obviously meant, "Scratch my damn belly." Sam huffed a laugh and complied.

"I'm glad you're here," he murmured to the dog as he ran his finger through the white patch of fur on Keates's midsection, so stark against the black of the rest of his coat. Keates let his mouth loll open, and his tongue poked out.

Within the hour, they had taken Keates on a walk, grabbed coffee and bagels and fruit for the road, and were back on the interstate. Sarah quickly pulled out her phone to send Erin a text, then dropped it back into the satchel at her feet and turned to Sam. "Do you believe in God?" she asked, out of nowhere.

"Do I – what?" Sam stuttered, turning to look at her incredulously. She was staring at him in that fearless way she had, her face open and expectant, her hands softly folded in her lap as if she'd just asked about the weather. She gave a half-shrug.

"You have more basis on which to form an opinion than anyone I've ever met. And you of course don't have to tell me, but I'd just like to know, if you're willing to talk about it. Do you believe in God?"

Sam opened his mouth, closed it, and sighed. "Sarah, I… I don't know what you want me to say."

She blinked. "I don't _want_ you to say anything. Like I'm not expecting or looking for a specific answer or anything. I just… after my mom died, I kind of stopped believing in God. And I know that makes me sound stupid and shallow–"

"No it doesn't–"

"Because people get sick and die every day, it's not like her death was anything particularly unusual or tragic, but then…" She trailed off, and blushed.

"But then?" Sam prompted, glancing at her again. On the one hand, it was far too early for this kind of conversation, especially for the kind of answer Sam would have to give if he was going to be honest with her. But on the other… Sam wanted to understand Sarah like he hadn't wanted to understand another person in a long time.

Sarah stared down at her lap and clenched her fingers together more tightly now. "But then I met you," she mumbled, so quietly that Sam almost didn't catch it. He sucked in a breath. "You and Dean. And I just… I remember thinking that if there was a god, how cold he justify allowing homicidal ghost children to exist? But then, if there was a god, he had also allowed people like you and your brother to exist, people who give up everything to fight them, just to keep people like me safe."

Once in elementary school, when Sam had been about six or seven, a kid on the playground had kicked a soccer ball directly into his stomach. He hadn't been expecting it, so he'd done nothing to block it, and he had doubled up, completely winded.

That was how he felt now.

When he was finally able to speak again, Sam said without looking at her, "I have no idea how to respond to that. It doesn't seem like the kind of thing you thank somebody for."

"I told you," she replied quietly, "you are the reason I realized I wanted to live."

Another few dozen miles passed in silence, and behind them, the sun crept up in the sky. "Do I believe in God?" Sam finally mused aloud. At the very least, he owed her an answer after what she'd said. "I mean, I know for certain that God exists."

"What?" Whatever Sarah had been expecting, Sam was willing to bet that it hadn't been that.

"A total of four angels have ever actually seen him," Sam elaborated, keeping his eyes fixed on the road. "I have a feeling that it's limited to the archangels. Actually," he paused, reconsidering. "Anna said it was four, but I don't know if she knew that Joshua had met him."

"Wait – wait, back up." Sarah held up her hands. "Isn't Anna the rebel angel who tried to help you, and then got captured and tortured?"

"Yeah." Sam ran a hand through his hair. He had spent the last three years of his life thinking that he could have done something to save Anna, that he owed her better. "And Joshua was the angel Dean and I met in the center of heaven. I'm not sure if Anna knew about him. But… to answer your question, I do believe in the existence of God. I just don't believe that he gives a shit about any of us."

He heard Sarah's soft gasp, but he didn't turn to look at her.

"Dean and I had to go through a ton of shit in God's name, as part of God's plan," Sam elaborated, his voice flat and his eyes on the road. "The apocalypse was me and Dean stopping a pair of archangels from tearing the planet apart because God didn't care enough to make sure that they didn't kill each other and take half of us with them." He knew he sounded bitter, and he didn't care. "God didn't want to get his shit together, so Dean had to watch me jump into hell. And he had to spend a year thinking I was lost to him, and then he had to spend another six months thinking that I was permanently separated from my soul. He literally had to die to get me my soul back."

Sarah had heard all this before, of course, but he hadn't sounded so angry when he was sitting in her sunlit kitchen, and he knew it. "I'm sorry if that's not what you wanted to hear," he added eventually.

"Can you tell me more?" Sarah asked quietly, and Sam glanced over at her to see her curled up on herself, leaning against the door with her knees drawn up to her chest and her arms wrapped around them.

"God… look, the way I see it, God gave up on this planet at some point," Sam said. "And I didn't want to think about that for a long time. I prayed every day for a really long time."

"What changed?" Sarah's voice was a touch hoarse now.

Sam shrugged. "I mean, they gave up on me first. Shit, an angel pulled my brother out of hell when I couldn't. But… but then they lied to us. They played us. They didn't give a damn how many people were going to die if they didn't get their shit together. That wasn't the point, for them, even if it was supposed to be. And a handful of them, like Cas and Anna, were targeted for wanting to help us help humanity. I just… where was God through all of this?"

Sarah didn't say anything, but then Sam didn't expect her to. It was one thing, he knew, to talk about belief in God, and another to talk about faith. After a few moments of silence, he said, "I'm sorry."

"Okay," Sarah snapped, sitting up straight beside him; he glanced over at her to see her glaring at him. "You are not allowed to apologize to me unless you step on my toe. Nothing else."

"Sarah–"

"Shush!" She held up a single finger far too close to his face for comfort while he was driving. "I do not want to hear it. I do not want to hear any more apologies from you about stuff that isn't your fault, or that you had no control over, or that, even if the other two were false, you _still_ don't need to apologize for, because you didn't do anything wrong. We're done. Right, Keates?" she asked over her shoulder. A low bark sounded from the backseat. Sarah turned back to Sam, satisfied. "So. Enough."

Reluctantly, Sam allowed the small laugh to bubble up from his chest. "Fine."

"Don't laugh at me. I'm serious." Sarah was still looking at him sternly. "I asked you a question, and you answered it. There's nothing sorry-worthy in that. Okay?" She waited, but he didn't respond. "_Okay, Sam?_"

"All right! Okay." Sarah's eyebrows were still in danger of disappearing into her hairline, so Sam added, "I promise."

"Unless you step on my foot."

"Unless I step on your foot," he repeated. "Got it." He let her huff, pleased with herself, before he asked, "Am I in a lot of danger of stepping on your foot?"

"Shut up and drive." With a huff, Sarah dug through the box of tapes for a moment, but eventually put it away again and instead flipped on the radio.

"You mad at me?" Sam asked. He tried to say it with a smile, but he couldn't quite keep the anxiety out of his voice.

Sarah rolled here eyes. "Of course not. It's just… Sam, you're… you're a remarkable person. And the fact that you think you owe me of all people any sort of apology after… after everything you've been through is just dumb. Also, I volunteered to be here. I _want _to be here. How often do I have to tell you that?"

Sam looked back at the road without answering. It was odd, being on this side of the conversation. He and Dean had had it once, just once, in the year between Jessica and Dad dying. He didn't think Dean had believed him when Sam had said that he wanted to see it through with Dean.

Instead of directly replying, Sam told her, "For what it's worth, I think you're pretty remarkable too."

"Of course I am," Sarah retorted, rolling her eyes, and Sam laughed.

"Where are we in relation to Mount Rushmore?" Sarah asked vaguely when the sun was almost directly overhead.

Sam glanced at her, smirking, "One state too far north, for one thing."

Sarah thought for a moment, then blushed furiously. "I do not need your sass, Mr. Winchester."

"Fine." Sam held up his left hand in surrender. "It's about four and a half hours south, if I remember right. Listen, it's noon. Want to stop for food?"

"Sure." Sarah sat up straight as Sam took an off-ramp. "Where are we?"

"Dickinson, North Dakota. Tiny college town, basically."

Sarah made the executive decision that they should grab food to go from the diner and then take it to a park so Keates could run around while they ate. They took seats at a picnic table in a park that turned out to be adjacent to the campus of the state university. Sam perched sideways to toss a tennis ball he'd found to Keates in between bites of his salad while Sarah dragged a French fry through the blob of ketchup in the lid of her Styrofoam container and watched a handful of college kids play pickup soccer, probably skipping class the second-to-last week before finals to do it. "Were we ever that young?" she asked idly, and Sam wrestled the ball from Keates's panting mouth and looked at her. She nodded at the game, at the girls who had pulled off their hoodies so they could run around in their sports bras, at the boys who kept hooking their elbows around each other's necks to grind their knuckles into their hair.

Sam shrugged and tossed the ball again, and Keates gave a joyful yelp and bounded off after it. "I really don't remember," Sam replied. "I mean, I don't remember ever being that young. Ever feeling that young."

He could feel Sarah's eyes on him, and instead of looking back at her, he snapped his fingers at Keates, who was running back to him tennis ball in his mouth and his ears flopping. Sam took the ball back and, for the sake of variety, threw it in a different direction. Again, Keates barked and gave chase.

"How about this, then," Sarah said abruptly. "My junior year of high school, I took AP US history from this… this absolutely brilliant guy. Like teaching was his third career and it was what he'd always wanted to do, and he just… he was amazing. And in his last-day-of-school speech that all the best teachers give, he said that, if we're lucky, throughout our lives we have three teachers who change our lives. He was one of mine." She paused expectantly. "Can you tell me who yours were?"

"Hmm." Sam sighed and sat back a little, drumming his fingers on the bench in front of him as he thought about it. "One of the English teachers I had my freshman year. Mr. Wyatt."

"And what was special about him?"

"He was… he told me that if I didn't want to, I really didn't have to go into the family business. Not that I told him what the family business _was_," he hurried to add, off Sarah's raised eyebrows. "Dean and I just always decided to say 'mechanic,' because it was what Dad did sometimes, and it was what Dean did whenever we were somewhere long enough for him to get a job. But if I owe Stanford to any two people, it'd be Dean and Mr. Wyatt."

Keates had apparently had enough of fetch, because he trotted back over to them and hopped up onto the bench in front of Sam, dropping the tennis ball into his hand and then stretching his head up. Sam obligingly scratched Keates's ears as he took another bite of his salad, and he saw Sarah smile. "Do you have two more?" she prompted, unwrapping one of the plain hamburger patties they'd ordered at the diner and tossing it to Keates, who caught it and wolfed it down.

"Not… not in that same way. I mean I've known hunters who really shaped who I was, and stuff, but my hero growing up was Dean." Sam shrugged. "That's not to say that I didn't have professors in college who really shaped my life, because I did, but none of them _defined_ it. Tell me about yours?"

Sarah glanced down at the table and noticed that Sam was done with his food, and she decided she'd had enough too. "Tell you in the car?" she asked, standing and gathering her trash. Sam gave her a grateful smile before reaching out to clip Keates's leash back onto his collar.

Sarah talking about her Spanish-born medieval British lit professor had somehow led to a discussion of pedagogy, and how teaching methods necessarily had to differ from elementary to secondary to post-secondary education. Sam had an interesting perspective, given the sheer number of different teachers he'd seen throughout his lifetime, and Sarah was surprised to hear that he was opposed to tenure.

"It protects bad teachers," he said, shrugging. "The good ones will keep their jobs if performance evaluations work differently."

"But there's so much volatility in the job market for teachers," Sarah argued. "As long as education is the first part of the state or federal budget to get cut, don't you think that _some_ sort of guarantee program for teachers to have job security is necessary? For the sake of the unions if nothing else?"

"The unions deserve more power, for sure, but I don't see abolishing tenure as at odds with their goals, necessarily."

At that point they'd lost the thread of the topic, because Sarah had suddenly realized that they were driving through what was essentially desert, and started marveling over the fact that they were so far north and yet – _desert_. Sam had found her amusing, and she shushed him. Eventually, he found himself telling her about a chupacabra hunt that he'd gone on with his father in this part of the country while Dean worked his own woman in white hunt, and Sarah laughed at the idea of a skinny little fourteen-year-old Sam sneaking around a livestock ranch, trying to avoid detection as he drew wards onto the posts of the pens. In turn, Sarah told him about the summer she'd spent with Habitat for Humanity in Appalachia, building houses with some sorority sisters.

"You were in a sorority?"

"I can do without your patriarchal condescension, thank you very much. Some of the hardest working and smartest and most into service-learning people I knew were into Greek life."

They were able to talk to each other more fluidly than they had been during twenty questions, and that combined with Sarah's fascination with the scenery combined with Sam's disregard for the speed limit given the complete lack of state patrol anywhere, meant that exited the highway in western Montana when the sun was a giant orange ball suspended just over the horizon. "That's the Flathead River," Sam told her as they rumbled over an ancient-looking steel bridge. "It's just up… yeah." Once they'd cleared the bridge, Sam abruptly turned off onto a tiny dirt road that Sarah would definitely have missed had she been the one driving. She remained silent as Sam carefully guided the car down the road, which twisted and turned along with the river it paralleled, and Keates drew his head back in from the window. "Car's all wrong for this terrain, but what are you gonna do," Sam murmured as they cleared a clump of trees and rounded a last bend. He cut the engine and, after giving his own quick glance to the building itself, turned to watch Sarah study it.

It hadn't changed much, of course. It was still tiny, and made of logs, with a red front door. The rusted-out shell of that red Camaro was still off to the side of the drive. A pair of rickety rocking chairs still sat on the porch.

Keates whined and pawed at the door handle, and Sam glanced back at him. "Ready to get out, buddy?"

Keates yipped in response, and Sam faced back to Sarah. "You okay?"

"It looks like something out of a fairy tale," she whispered, eyes wide.

Sam thought about that as he studied the house too. It had been a safe space for him and Dean and Bobby, however briefly. It had been where he'd been able to look after Dean while Dean's leg had healed. It had been where he and Dean had begun to put themselves back together after Bobby had died. They had felt protected here.

All he said was, "I guess it does" before asking, "You ready to get out?"

"Uh huh." Sarah opened her door then stepped back to open Keates's, who immediately bounded off to find a secluded patch of woods. Sam opened the trunk and shouldered his duffel bag while taking Sarah's in his hand, and she smiled in thanks before wrapping her arms around her middle and following him up to the front door. Keates wandered back to them while Sam was fumbling single-handedly with the keys.

Once he'd gotten the door open, he stood back to allow Sarah inside, and she flicked on the lights and looked around as he followed her in, dropped the bags, and shut and locked the door behind them. "Do I want to know?" Sarah asked, eying the bowl on the kitchen table that still had a tiny puddle of blood at the bottom and extinguished candle stubs at the corners of the chalk pentagram drawing around it. Keates walked over to it and cautiously sniffed at it.

"Probably not," Sam answered, going for the salt under the sink. He made cursory work of lining all the windowsills and doorways with it. Sarah watched silently for a moment.

Finally, she asked, "Is that… necessary, or…?"

"Just a precaution," Sam reassured her, standing and smiling. "C'mon, let me show you what's going to be your room."

He gave her the room that they had set aside for Castiel, because Sam knew it had never actually been slept in and therefore would be as clean as possible. He quickly salted the windows as Sarah left her bags on the bed, then asked her, "Does this seem okay?"

"It seems great," she told him, smiling in that reassuring way that she had, then led the way back out into the main part of the house and took a seat on the sofa.

Sam had almost forgotten that there were books _everywhere_: stacked on the floor, lined up along the walls, piled on the end tables. Something in his gut twisted as he remembered Bobby's house in Sioux Falls, but he shook the feeling off and reached for a legal pad he'd left on the armchair last week. "So," Sarah asked brightly, rubbing her hands together, "where do we start?"

Sam took a seat beside her. It felt like a light had come on inside him, now that he was _here_, they were so close, the answer had to be in this house somewhere, and he couldn't keep the smile from his face as he reached for the grimoire that still lay open on the coffee table. "We just need a way to figure out how to check if a certain soul is in a certain realm," he told her. "Now, that's… that's not something we had to do last time around, so we never paid attention to it in any of the reading, but–"

Sarah took the book from him and grabbed one of the still-blank legal pads that Sam had yet to get to. "Okay. Tell me what key words I should look for?"

Sam shrugged. "There aren't really any; you kind of just have to go for it. Some of it's in Latin, and I'm sorry–"

"Sam." Sarah cut him off with those exasperated and raised eyebrows with which he was growing all too familiar. "I'm an art historian. I can read Latin. I can read scrawly old dead person. Come on, I can even get by in Greek. I'll be fine," she told him, yawning.

Sam hesitated for a moment. "I know it's been a long couple of days, so if you'd rather just start this tomorrow–"

She snorted. "You're right, it has been a long couple of days. To that end, I'd like to get started on the research I sat shotgun for twenty-three hundred miles to get to."

"More like twenty-four," Sam muttered, but aloud he said, "Okay. But don't worry about it if you feel like you need to go to bed or something."

Sarah picked up a pen and pulled the cap off with her teeth. "Bet I can out-research you."

"Oh really?" Sam asked, a surprised laugh escaping him. "I bet you can't."

"You are so on." And with that, Sarah flipped to the beginning of the book, twisted her hair up into a knot at the top of her head, and balanced the legal pad in her lap, prepared to take notes. Sam stared at her for a moment, torn between startled and amused, before he got up to retrieve a copy of one of the books that he and Dean had been working with all those years ago when they thought that the answer to averting the apocalypse was to kill Lilith. He thought he remembered something useful in it. He cleared the bowl and candles off the tabletop before taking a seat, and he half-smiled as he watched Keates decide that the armchair in the corner was _his_ armchair, and hop up into it, curl up, and rest his head on his paws as he kept an eye on Sarah.

Sam had a sneaking suspicion that Sarah wasn't going to last too long, and sure enough, after they'd been at the cabin for an hour and the sun had sank fully behind the horizon outside the windows, he looked up at the sound of her legal pad flopping to the floor. Sarah was now lying on her side on the couch, one hand still curled around her pen, the other tucked up next to her cheek, eyes closed. Sam smiled and set his own pen down before standing and walking over to her, carefully stepping over her notes. "She's out, huh?" he whispered to Keates, who huffed in response.

Careful not to wake her, Sam slipped an arm behind Sarah's shoulders and another under her knees and scooped her up, walking over to her bedroom. Keates beat him there, and nudged the door open for him. Sam lay Sarah down on the bed and, as gently as he could, untied her sneakers and slipped them off her feet. He froze when she stirred, but eventually she settled, and he took the flannel blanket folded at the end of the bed and stretched it up, tucking it in around her shoulders. The fingers on one of her hands curled around the edge and she shifted so that she was lying on her side, but otherwise slept on.

"You staying?" he asked Keates in a whisper, but the dog just padded around Sam to nudge at Sarah's hand, as if to make sure she was really comfortable, before looking back up at Sam and walking back out the door. Sam followed, gently closing the door behind him. When he resumed his seat at the kitchen table and pulled his book and his notes back towards him, Keates curled up on the floor below the table and rested his head on the toe of Sam's boot.

It was, Sam thought, possibly the most unconventional research team he'd ever been a part of, with the possible exception of himself, his brother, Anna, and Ruby trying to find out what had become of the angel's grace. He had a feeling, though, that this was going to end slightly better than that one had, and he settled down to go over secondhand accounts of Renaissance priests who had witnessed the Angel of Death coming to take souls into hell, Keates a comforting presence at his feet.

* * *

**Thanks for reading!**


	7. Chapter 7

**Hello again! It's crazy to think that this story is almost two months old. Thanks for sticking with me!**

* * *

When Sarah woke up the next morning, it took her a moment to remember where she was, and how she'd gotten there – to a cozy little room in what looked like a log cabin, with the clearest sunlight she'd ever seen streaming in through the window. It also took her a moment to remember why she was still wearing jeans, and where her dog was, and who was attached to the soft laugh she could hear from beyond the closed door.

_Oh. That._

Once it all came back to her, she smiled to herself and curled up tighter under the blanket. They'd made it here, and that was probably going to be the hardest part. She was going to help Sam get Dean back, and then…

She paused. And then what?

Sam had grown happier by degrees the longer they'd been on the road, the closest they'd gotten to _here_. Even now, she could hear him laughing (soft laughter, but it still counted) at whatever dumb thing Keates was doing. Obviously, he was going to be overjoyed if they got Dean back. Why, then, would he want to stay with her?

Whoa. _Stay_ with her? She wasn't counting on him _staying _with her. Just because she'd learned so much about him and the land they'd driven through and maybe even about herself over the last three days didn't mean that his place in her life or her place in his was anything approaching permanent. She was a friend helping him. That was it.

She shook herself and sat up, pushing the blanket off. She needed a shower.

When she emerged into the main area of the cabin twenty minutes later, Sam looked up at her from his seat on the sofa and smiled. He looked fresher, she realized, and the smell of coffee and bacon was wafting through the building. "Morning," Sam said. "There's a plate of breakfast in the oven for you, to keep it warm. And there's some fruit in the fridge. And help yourself to some coffee."

"Thanks," she smiled back, and went to collect her food. Once she'd balanced an apple on her plate alongside the bacon and omelet (she tried not to read anything into the fact that he'd made her an omelet that was almost a perfect match to the one she'd ordered two days ago) and had a cup of coffee in her other hand, she went to join him on the sofa. "Where's Keates?"

"Terrorizing squirrels," Sam replied, nodding towards the front door which, Sarah noticed with no small amount of surprise, was propped open sot that they could hear the dog's aggressive barking. She was about to ask about the broken salt line when she saw the shotgun Sam had left pointing at the door.

Instead, she asked, "You get some sleep last night?"

He nodded and ran a hand through his hair. "I did, yeah. I mean, I'm no good to Dean if I burn myself out and miss something in the research."

"Mmm." Sarah took a sip of her coffee. "Speaking of, point me in a direction."

Sam handed her the legal pad she'd been using briefly the previous night, before she'd fallen asleep. "Just keep doing what you're doing, honestly. We know more about hell and we have more about hell than we do about purgatory, so I figure if we keep moving through the literature about that–"

"Then we'll either find something or eliminate the possibility faster," Sarah finished the sentence for him. "Got it. What are you working on?"

Sam hesitated, then showed her the little leather-bound notebook. "Bobby's journal. Or the journal he kept for the twenty or so months after the apocalypse, when purgatory started agitating."

"Weren't you there for that?" Sarah asked. It wasn't like Sam to waste time reading someone else's account of what he had himself witnessed.

"Actually…" Sam rubbed at the back of his neck. "I guess I was there, but my memory of it is kind of spotty. I didn't have a soul for most of it, and what I do remember from that time isn't… isn't _fun_, and it'll just be faster for me to get the information this way than try to recover it myself."

"Fair enough," Sarah said, attempting lightness. If any part of Sam's story had genuinely turned her stomach, it had been _that_ part – the idea of Sam being trapped in his own head, having to kill parts of himself and absorb _thousands_ of years of memories of hell on top of the months his soulless self committing acts that Sam himself would never do. And all that to rejoin another fight to save the world. _And_ he had lost his mind in thanks for his sacrifice.

"How do you do it?" The question escaped her before she could stop it. "How do you get up in the morning?"

Sam shrugged and looked down at the floor beneath his feet. "Someone else needs me to."

"Oh, Sam…"

"It's more than that, though," he went on, still not looking at her. "Or at least it was more than that this time."

He didn't elaborate, so she found herself prompting him. "Yeah?"

A smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. "I almost hit this dog, and the crazy woman he belonged to seemed to think this meant she should take care of me and… and give me hope again."

Sarah's stomach twisted up on itself again, and silence fell between them. Sam glanced up at her after a moment, and whatever he saw in her face made his eyes widen and his cheeks tinge pink before he quickly looked away again. Embarrassed and more than a little flustered, Sarah grabbed the grimoire she'd been using last night. "For what it's worth, I'm glad that you almost hit my dog but didn't hit my dog and then stopped," she mumbled. "We should get to work."

After a while, in which their awkward silence shifted into companionable silence, Keates trotted back in with his head up and his tail raised at a jaunty angle. "You show those squirrels who's boss?" Sam asked with a smile, and Keates barked proudly before plopping down in his armchair. Sarah opened her mouth to scold him about all the dead leaves he'd brought in stuck to his fur and was currently crackling all over the upholstery, but Sam was smiling at Keates over the edge of his book, so she left it alone.

The grimoire was an easier read than she'd expected, mostly because there was nothing valuable in it, and after the hour it had taken her to read it, she tossed it aside with a huff. Without even looking up, Sam told her, "Grab another one and keep going. It's easy to let yourself get discouraged with this kind of thing. There is an answer somewhere. There is."

Sarah didn't let herself ask who he was trying to convince, but she did as he said. Her second book was in French, and was some sort of nun's diary written in the midst of the Reformation. Apparently the Lutheran heathens were regularly consorting with the devil, but the nun provided with Sarah with no information as to how they might have been going about it, so what use was she?

A few hours and three books in, Sarah was trying to swallow down her frustration. She looked over at Sam, who had at some point moved over to the kitchen table so that he could have his laptop open at one elbow with a book flipped open and his legal pad between them the better to take notes. A touch of the steel that had been in his eyes when she'd first met him was back, and she made herself believe that it was just his determination, it was just that he now had an unshakeable goal, but a _different_ unshakeable goal than he'd had five days ago. He wasn't going to hurt himself. He just wanted to find his brother. She _knew_ that.

All at once, it was too much for her – the desperation in the air, the dusty smell of the cabin, the near-illegible Latinate on the pages before her. She stood abruptly, and Sam glanced up at her while Keates lifted his head from its cradle in his paws. "You okay?" Sam asked her.

She nodded without looking at him. "I just need some air," she mumbled, grabbing at the hoodie she'd left draped over the couch last night.

She didn't know what she was expecting, but it wasn't for Sam to nod understandingly and say, "If you head left out the front door, there's a path into the woods that starts to run parallel to the water after a while. It's clearly marked, but take your phone in case you need anything. Also," he added, "I didn't see you text Erin today, so you might want to do that."

Sarah hesitated, trying to find any trace of animosity in his eyes, and failing, before she mumbled, "Thanks. I'll be back soon." Without her giving him any indication, Keates hopped down from his chair and followed her out the door.

On the porch, she took a deep breath of the damp air, marveling at how _clean_ it smelled. It wasn't as if Montgomery was a huge city or anything, but it definitely didn't do much to encourage the feeling of the great outdoors or anything. What must it have been like, she wondered as she began to walk towards the path Sam had mentioned, to grow up surrounded in land like this? To be in it often enough that you registered but were no longer surprised by the differences between it and larger metropolitan areas?

She shot Erin a text, which took forever to send because service was awful, and then slipped her phone back into her pocket. As she wandered down the path, Keates would trot ahead of her, sniff at something, then fall back to trail after her, with the periodic break to bark at a squirrel. The sunlight was filtering down through the tree branches above her, and Sarah tipped her head back as she walked to feel the warmth play on her face. Maybe they were approaching this wrong, she mused. Just… just blindly trying to read anything about everything, even if they were limiting themselves to hell, couldn't be the most efficient way of doing this. For all the demons Sam had known over the course of his life, none were easily accessible to be asked questions. Maybe they should have tried to find that Meg girl…?

"Oh for God's _sake,_" Sarah hissed to herself, coming to a halt so abruptly that Keates bumped into her knees from behind. They _had_ an avenue to ask for help. Not a demon, sure, but wouldn't angels be able to look into hell and see if someone was there? After all, hadn't Castiel gone _into_ hell twice, to get Dean and then to get Sam? And in order to _do_ that, wouldn't he have needed a way to see for sure where they were?

Sarah hadn't ever really been much for praying, or at least she hadn't since her mother died, so she wasn't really sure what she was doing. Even so, she slightly extended her arms, palms up, and closed her eyes. "Um… in the name of the… father and the son… and the holy spirit?" she started, wincing at how it came out like a question. "My name is Sarah Blake, and I'm…. a friend of Sam Winchester's. And we need help. We need to know… where his brother is. And I would think… I would think that after everything that Sam and Dean have done for all of you… you could at least help us out with this one. Um, amen."

She opened one eye and squinted around. Nothing happened, except Keates cocking his head to the side and staring at her like she was crazy. "Well, it was worth a shot," she muttered a touch defensively, dropping her arms and turning to head back to the cabin. She didn't get more than half a step, though, before she stumbled and Keates let out a bark, because there was suddenly a woman standing on the path in front of them.

The first, incongruous thought that Sarah had as she straightened up and took two hasty steps backwards, was that this woman looked like someone who would have been her mother's friend. She had brown hair knotted into a prim bun at the back of her head, and her grey pantsuit was perfectly pressed, the blazer fastened over the starched white blouse buttoned all the way up to the collar. Sarah noted abstractly that the woman was wearing spike heels, which were somehow not sinking into the damp earth of the dirt path.

"Of course," the woman muttered, looking Sarah up and down with an assessing glint in her eyes. "Of course one of Anabiel's charges is a friend of Sam Winchester."

"W – what?" Sarah stammered. Keates, sensing Sarah's nervousness, paced forward, a growl rumbling out of his chest as he came to stand beside her.

The woman held up her hands. "I'm not here to hurt you, Sarah. I heard your prayers. My name is Naomi."

Quickly, Sarah ran through the catalogue of angels' names Sam had told her. _Michael Gabriel Uriel Zachariah Raphael Anna Hester Rachel Castiel Joshua Inias Balthazar… no Naomi_. So Sam had never met her. Sarah took another step back, and Keates shifted so that he was standing in front of her, his hackles up.

The angel – Naomi – glanced down at the dog before looking back up at Sarah. "You asked for our help, correct? Well, I am here to help you." She spread her arms and smiled at Sarah, who didn't smile back.

"How do I know I can trust you?"

Naomi raised her eyebrows. "I'm an angel, Sarah."

Sarah bit her tongue to stop the words _well that's not worth much _from escaping. "Okay," she said slowly instead, "where is Dean Winchester?"

Naomi smiled to herself and neatly clasped her hands. "So that's what this is about. Well, Sarah, I can't tell you. I'm sorry."

"Can't or won't?" Sarah demanded.

"Well I can tell you that he's not in heaven," Naomi said matter-of-factly, the smile slipping from her face. "I haven't seen him."

"And are those things mutually inclusive?" Sarah asked. She wasn't sure where this excessive attitude was coming, and scolded herself to check it before she pissed the angel off enough for her to… do God knew what, actually.

Naomi laughed once, but it sounded sad. "You do remind me of your guardian," she murmured, one of her thumbs rubbing over the back of the other as she studied Sarah. Louder, she said, "I work in intelligence, Ms. Blake. If we had Dean Winchester, I would know it."

"Okay," Sarah replied, raising her eyebrows. "If you work in intelligence, then, shouldn't you be able to tell me where he _is?_ I get the feeling that no one sent you to me, which means you chose to come yourself, which means you don't take orders. Shouldn't you have the power to find Dean for me? And isn't one of your own with him? Shouldn't you care where Castiel is?"

"Watch yourself," Naomi warned. "I have been to war, girl. Don't test me."

Sarah stayed silent, but waited for Naomi to answer her question anyway. Keates was still growling.

Naomi sighed. "Neither Dean nor Castiel is in heaven, and we cannot see either of them in hell. Trust me when I tell you that we have been looking," she added, meeting Sarah's eye. "I suppose that leaves only one option for you, doesn't it?"

"Okay." Sarah folded her arms across her chest, ignoring the way that her stomach seemed to be dropping. "You willing to help us get them out?"

"No."

Sarah waited, but Naomi didn't elaborate. "No? That's it?"

"Things are happening which you cannot even begin to comprehend," Naomi told her, a note of ice piercing her voice. "It is far better for everyone if Dean Winchester is removed from this coming fight. As for Castiel, we will handle him ourselves, without your _help_." She huffed. "Do you mind silencing your dog? I can't hear myself think."

"Keates," Sarah snapped, and Keates immediately fell silent, but he did not relax. _Good boy_, Sarah thought, but she didn't take her eyes off Naomi.

"This is not your fight, Sarah Blake," Naomi told her, and Sarah felt her eyes narrow. "It's not for you. For the sake of your own safety, as well as the safety of those you love, stay out of it. Can you do that?"

Instead of answering the question, Sarah asked one of her own, ignoring the part of her brain that was screaming at her to leave, to get back to the cabin with its sigils on the walls and salt at the doors and warrior seated at the table. "What did you mean when you said I was one of Anabiel's charges?"

Naomi hesitated for a moment, looking Sarah up and down again, and then sighed. "Your guardian angel was one named Anabiel. Ungrateful girl. She spent her whole existence questioning authority – _why would God have it like this? How do we even know He would have it like this, if He isn't here to tell us_? – And she simply was not satisfied with the idea that there are some answers that she didn't need to know. She wouldn't follow orders. She wouldn't lead her garrison as a good commander would, the foolish child."

Sarah could feel herself grow cold. She recognized this story.

"And rather than face the consequence of her disobedience," Naomi continued bitterly, "she reached into herself and tore out her own grace. You would have been a child of about five or six years old, I believe. And she fell, and became human, and took the name of Anna. Even after that, though, even with her no longer abusing the power of heaven over the humans she was supposed to be guarding, all of you who were hers had a nasty streak of rebellion in you. Except you," Naomi said thoughtfully, taking a step towards Sarah. Keates began growling again, but this time she ignored him. "You never rebelled, Sarah. And we always wondered why."

"Rebelled against what?" Sarah asked sharply, her hands balling into fists against her ribcage.

Naomi shrugged. "You tell me. But maybe you finally are. You are the company you keep, after all."

"And what the hell is _that_ supposed to mean?"

"Only that the Winchesters rarely do as they should," Naomi responded, harshly. "The apocalypse was an unholy mess, if you'll pardon my word choice. It was supposed to be so simple. The righteous man breaks the first seal in hell, clearing the way for the Michael and Lucifer vessels to come into their own. Azazel did manage to collect John Winchester's soul as he was meant to, but then Alistair couldn't break the man in hell. How hard could it be, to break a man with that much anger in his heart? But no, we had to take his son, we had to take the Michael vessel, and waste time breaking _him_."

Sarah's heart was pounding, but she didn't make a sound for fear that Naomi would stop talking.

Naomi began to pace back and forth across the path as she went on. "He broke easily, of course; he was never as strong as his father. But we had to pull him out as quickly as possible, which of course delayed the work that the demon whore was doing to make the Lucifer vessel kill Lilith. We almost lost him, in fact, there at the last, because the fool Castiel released Dean from Zachariah's holding. And then we _did _lose him, we lost them both, because Dean decided to disobey God's orders, and Sam decided to throw the whole thing, not only trap Lucifer in the cage but trap Michael with him!

"Do you know what I've had to deal with since then? The chaos that has overcome heaven? First the war between Raphael and Castiel, which only happened because of the ridiculous notion of free will that those boys put into Castiel's head. _Thousands_ died, and since then it's been anarchy! And for what? For _what_? There was a plan, and had Sam and Dean Winchester realized that God's will was more important than whatever they felt about each other, it would have ended the way it was supposed to. The way it was _meant_ to be!" She was shouting by the end, and a sudden gust of wind raced through the trees, rattling branches and blowing tendrils of Sarah's hair across her face. Keates's growling cut off with a whimper, and he edged in closer to Sarah.

Naomi took a breath to calm herself. "You must forgive me," she said. "But in answer to your original question, Dean Winchester is not in heaven. There is no room for him, and we have no use for him, nor for his brother. You don't want this to be your fight. It's not as if rebelling ever did your guardian any favors. Stop asking questions, Sarah Blake, and go home," she finished, her eyes emotionless now as she watched Sarah for a reaction.

Instinct told Sarah not to give her one. "I'd like to leave now," she enunciated, "if you're not going to tell me anything useful."

Naomi sighed. "If you care about Sam Winchester at all, know that it would be in his best interest to stay out of this, to leave his brother where he is."

"That's not going to happen. If you were there for the apocalypse, you would know that." Sarah was sure of remarkably little anymore, but she did know that.

"Don't presume to know more than I do, girl. That was your guardian's problem as well." For the third time, she looked Sarah up and down. "I have warned you. And that is all I have to say."

Sarah blinked, and Naomi was gone, although she thought she might have heard the sound of wings. Startled, she looked around, but there was no one on the path but her and Keates. "C'mon," she said shakily to the dog. "Let's… let's get back."

She had to stop herself from running back up the path, Keates cantering beside her, and when they burst through the door of the cabin, they were both a little out of breath. Sam looked up, frowning. "You guys okay?"

Sarah stared at him for a moment, her conversation with Naomi on a loop through her head. "Yeah," she bit out. "We're fine. Sorry."

Keates went directly to Sam and nudged at his hand, until Sam held out a palm for Keates to lick. Then Keates trotted over to the sofa, hopped onto it, and curled up before staring at Sarah expectantly. Avoiding Sam's eye, she walked over to the sofa as well and took a seat beside Keates, picking up her legal pad. There was a rustle, and she glanced up to see that Sam had gone back to his books. Taking a deep breath, Sarah reached past the diary she had been reading in favor for a decrepit textbook on top of what Sam had designated the purgatory pile. If nothing else, at least Sarah had learned from Naomi that Dean wasn't in hell, which made continuing to read texts related to hell kind of pointless.

Keates was watching Sarah with raised eyebrows, like he was waiting for her to do something, and she brushed him off. Nothing that Naomi had said to her would help Sam, at all. Naomi had told Sarah that she, Sarah, was in danger, that heaven didn't want Dean, and that everyone would be better off if Sam left Dean wherever he was, and there was pretty much nothing that would make Sarah tell Sam any of that until she'd figured out a way to phrase it better. Sam had already come so close to losing hope, and she'd be damned if she inadvertently got him any closer. She would tell Sam about Naomi later, she promised herself, once she'd had time to fully process the conversation.

When Sarah saw the spell for the first time, she was sure she must have imagined it. That the fatigue and the desperation and the near-illegible spidery French had combined to create a hallucination of something approaching what they so badly needed to see. She read it again – and again, sitting up from where she'd propped a bunch of the throw pillows against the hearth. Hearing her move, Sam looked up from his computer. "Sarah?"

"Shh." She held up a finger and read the page over the fourth time. This was too easy – it was too _simple_, it couldn't be that simple, there had to be more to it–

"Sarah, if you've got something, I'd really appreciate it if you'd share with the class," Sam said, his voice louder than usual, vibrating with barely-contained hope.

_Viens à moi maintenant, à l'heure de mon besoin, ange de la mort, et aidez-moi à comprendre._… Oh Jesus. Sarah scrambled to her feet and rushed across the cabin to Sam, who snapped his laptop shut and pushed it aside. "What do you know about reapers?" Sarah demanded, dropping the spellbook down on the table in front of him.

"Um…" Sam grabbed the book and pulled it towards himself as he answered. "We've dealt with a couple. One was bound to a human and didn't much appreciate it, and the other has helped us out of a couple of tight spots. Why? I'm not that great at reading French."

That pulled Sarah up short. "You don't know French?"

Sam glanced up at her impatiently. "I've got Spanish, Latin, Enochian, and English. I think I get a pass."

"Yeah, knowing the words of the angels might get you past that." Sarah tucked her hair behind her ears as she began speaking quickly. "Okay, so this is a spell to summon a reaper, see? And – and earlier I was thinking–" she cut herself off because she still wasn't ready to tell him about Naomi – "earlier I was thinking that the best way to find out where Dean is would be to ask someone who would _know,_ and–"

"And the person who would know best would be an agent of death – Sarah, you're a genius," Sam breathed, cutting her off. She was about to stammer out a thank you or something when he reached out and wrapped his hand around her wrist. She was caught for a moment by how _big_ his hands were, by how his fingers met wrapping around her wrist. The gun calluses that streaked across his palm were rough on her skin, and she felt pressure, certainly, but it didn't hurt. It wasn't hard enough to hurt.

"What does it say? What does it translate to?" Sam demanded, and Sarah gave herself a little shake and pulled the book closer to her on the tabletop.

"Okay, um… so the invocation is that bit from the end of the twenty-third psalm. _Quand je marche dans la vallée de l'ombre de la mort, je ne crains aucun mal, car tu es avec moi_ – though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil for you are with me, yeah?" When Sam nodded impatiently, Sarah cleared her throat and continued. "_Viens à moi maintenant, à l'heure de mon besoin, ange de la mort, et aidez-moi à comprendre. Je vous somme de vos connaissances, je commande votre présence pour vos competences – _that's basically come to me now in the hour of my need, angel of death, and help me to understand. I summon you for your knowledge; I command your presence for your skills. _Vous êtes éternel et intemporel, et je vous souhaite m'aider. Par l'os de mes ancêtres, par la force de ma volonté, par la grâce de Dieu, je vous ordonne de comparaître devant moi. _You are…" Sarah snapped her fingers several times in quick succession, struggling for the words, "eternal and ageless, sort of, and I bid you assist me. By the bone of my ancestors, by the strength of my will, by the grace of God, I command you to appear before me." She looked up at Sam. "is that how these things usually go?"

"Yeah… yeah, they do. The standard exorcism uses the sixty-eighth psalm as an invocation, yeah." Abruptly Sam stood and grabbed the book, flipping through it as he paced to one end of the room and back. "Sarah… Sarah, this is it." He came to a stop and pressed a fist to his mouth. "This…"

"We found it?" she squeaked, feeling the hope, the joy, bubble up in her chest.

Sam dropped the book and when he turned back to face Sarah he was _beaming_, oh God, he was smiling so bright, he looked ten years younger – and before she could fully process it he had crossed the cabin in two strides and scooped her up in his arms, hugging her so tight she almost couldn't breathe, and she could feel him trembling as she wrapped her arms around his neck, and her eyes barely came up to his collarbone and he smelled like the forest he smelled like the faded leather interior of his brother's car he smelled warm and his voice vibrated against her cheek when he said, "We did. _You_ did. Oh God, Sarah. Thank – thank you so much." He released her and placed his hands on her shoulders so he could look into her face, and she was startled to see that – were those tears? "_Thank you_."

"Don't. You'd've gotten there yourself eventually." She didn't want to hear him say that she'd saved his life, she didn't want to think about it, so instead she cleared her throat and said, "Now pick that relatively ancient and delicate book back up from where you dropped it, sir. Let's figure out how to get this done."

"Right." Sam released her and darted back across the room to scoop up the book. He flipped through it to find Sarah's spell as the two of them took seats at the table, and then he passed it back to her. "Is there a list of ingredients?"

"Um… yes," Sarah answered, scanning the page. "It's… I'm just going to assume that this kind of weird is par for the course. Okay. It's asking for some holy water, a rod from a cedar, and…" She straightened the book and leaned in closer, narrowing her eyes as she tried to decipher the spidery handwriting. "The… the earth from the grave of a family member of the person casting the spell."

Sam sat up, frowning. "Really? What's the verbatim translation?"

"Le sang versé de sang, la terre décoré avec de la mémoire de votre passé familial. So literally the spilled blood of your blood, the earth decorated with the memory of your… family that has passed." She thought for a moment. "We could go to my mom's grave, back in New York. I think I'd have to cast the spell, though, if we were to use her. Not that I mind."

"I mind," Sam muttered. "Shit like this has the potential to go south real fast. You know what we could do instead," he continued, reopening his computer. "We could go southeast to Lawrence."

_Lawrence…_ "The place where you were born?" she blurted. "Why? I thought your dad got a hunter's funeral and… and he wasn't able to bury your mother."

"That's true." Sam was clicking his way through something that looked like a database of county death certificates. "But both of my mom's parents died in Lawrence. My maternal grandmother is for sure buried there. See?" He turned the computer back to Sarah, and she scrolled down through the death certificate of a woman named Deanna Campbell.

"Deanna?"

"Yeah." Sam half-smiled. "Her husband's name was Samuel. So what do you think? You and Keates up for another road trip?"

Sarah hesitated, biting her lip, and she was silent long enough that Sam looked up, anxious. "What?"

"Of course I'm up for another road trip," she told him, folding her arms on the tabletop and leaning forward. "But… Sam, you're running on only a handful of hours of sleep. And like you said, this has the potential to have something go really, really wrong."

"Sarah–"

"Just a few hours," she insisted, reaching out and wrapping her hand around his, where it had clenched into a fist. "We'll go, of course we'll go. I just want you to be at a hundred percent before we take off."

Sam lifted his free hand and ran it across his mouth, his eyes scanning again over the spell. His brows were knit together, and Sarah knew him well enough by now to know that he was trying hard not to be angry with her. She opened her mouth to try again at persuading him, but he sighed first. "Yeah, you're right. The worst thing I could do would be… to be just burnt out when we get there."

The decision was killing him, she knew. To be so close, and to have to hold off…

"Four hour nap?" Sarah asked, raising an eyebrow and swallowing her smile.

Sam paused, chewing at the inside of his mouth. "Will you be okay with three instead?"

Sarah began to protest, then stopped. "Fine. But all three, you understand?"

"Yeah." Sam grinned at her and stood, patting her hand before he withdrew his. "So we'll get going at…" he glanced at the clock. "A little after midnight?"

Sarah nodded. "Sounds good. Now go. _Go_," she insisted, when Sam didn't move but rather just cocked an eyebrow at her. She pointed a finger towards his bedroom as imperiously as she could, and finally he half-smiled at her.

"Fine. But you don't get to complain about me speeding."

"Whatever. You'll thank me when you pull off the spell perfectly on the first try. Now get." Sarah pulled her best imitation of her mother's face at bedtime and planted her hands on her hips. Sam held up his hands in surrender and backed off.

Sarah watched as he retreated into his room and waited for the door to click shut behind him before brushing her hair out of her face and walking to the still-open front door and calling for Keates. She had to wait a moment, but eventually he bounded in, covered in leaves and dirt and God knew what else, and she tried to scold him as she shut the door behind him. "Did you leave anything out there in the forest, bud?"

Keates yipped at her, smiling a big dumb dog grin, and she sighed through her smile. "You gonna keep me company while I sleep?" she asked, and he nudged her hand with his nose and trotted off towards her room. He waited on her bed while she showered quickly and changed into sweats, and when she perched on the edge of the mattress setting the alarm on her phone he tucked his head under her arm and settled in beside her. "Up," she cajoled, nudging him just enough that she could crawl under the blankets and he circled around at the edge of the bed before curling up.

Sarah shut off the lamp, but before she lay down, she took a moment to stare out the window, through the sliver of glass she could see between the white eyelet curtains. It was early, not even eight yet, and even though the sun was setting on the other side of the house, there was still a faint orange glow coming in through the curtains.

They had done it.

They had done it.

Or at least, she allowed, they had done the hard part. It couldn't get much worse, surely.

She snuggled down into the blankets, feet brushing up against the warm presence of her dog through the comforter, and prepared to drift to sleep.


	8. Chapter 8

This road trip – for lack of a better term – felt different from the other one.

Sam couldn't explain it, not really, although he was sure he could list some explanatory factors. For one, there was a decided difference between going to Whitefish and a cabin where he and Dean had felt safe in order to do some basic research, and going to Lawrence and the place where his mother had died and where the apocalypse had almost happened. Keates was once again hanging his head out the back window and Sarah was curled up in what was usually Sam's spot in the passenger's seat, cross-legged with her hair knotted up on top of her head. She'd brought a stack of books on both hell and purgatory with them, which were currently balanced between them on the bench seat. She'd brushed Sam off when he'd asked her why she wasn't bringing anything on heaven, and he'd shrugged and let her do what she wanted. It wasn't as if they couldn't go back to Montana for more books as needed.

But Sarah was quiet in a way she hadn't been before, and at first Sam had been okay with writing that off by the fact that they'd left in the middle of the night, that this was unusual, to put it mildly, but he had a vague feeling that there was more to it than that.

"Talk to me," he eventually murmured, glancing over at her just as the sun began to rise on his left. "What's bugging you?"

Sarah sighed, and then let the journal she was reading close over her thumb and clicked off the flashlight in her other hand. "I know… I know that this is basically typical for you," she began, looking anywhere but at Sam. "but this… this idea of death not being permanent, of heaven and hell and purgatory and God knows where else being… _permeable _places that it's possible to just skate in and out of–"

Realization dawned for Sam. "you're thinking about your mother."

Sarah was silent for such a long moment that Sam thought she wasn't going to answer. She did, though, and the words tumbled out, filling the car along with the dusty orange light of the sunrise. "There's so much I didn't get to say to her, Sam, because she didn't want us to say goodbye, she didn't want to make it official or maudlin or campy, so we just pretended that we could go on the way we always had done, and I didn't want to upset her, so of course I went with it, and I never said goodbye, and I never thanked her, and I never made sure she knew how much I loved her, and if I could just have one chance, just _one more chance_–"

Sam cut her off, his own eyes now fixed on the road. "You don't want it. Not like this."

"Wh – what?"

"Sarah…" Sam sighed and leaned back just enough that his head brushed the top of the seat. "It's not life. Take it from someone who's come back from the dead twice now, it causes more problems than it solves. Heaven and hell really _should_ be impermeable. It would have solved a lot of problems."

"Then why are we doing this, Sam?" Sarah demanded. "You _know _I don't begrudge you this shot at getting Dean back. Hell, I practically put the idea in your head. But why is this okay, if it wasn't okay that he brought you back, or that Castiel brought you back?"

Sam shrugged. "It wasn't okay when Cas did it. And it definitely wasn't okay when Dean did it, not with how much it cost. But… if what we're starting to think happened is what happened, then Dean isn't dead. He's just trapped." He hesitated, then continued. "I am absolutely not trying to diminish the pain you feel for your mom. You know I would never do that." he looked over at her, and she was watching him with solemn eyes, but he could tell that she believed him. "But if Dean is trapped in hell or in purgatory, if his death wasn't natural, then it wasn't before his time and I owe it to him to bring him back. And if he's in heaven, then of course I'm going to leave him there."

Sarah winced and looked away at the mention of heaven, but she didn't speak.

"Can you forgive me?" Sam asked.

"What?" Sarah's head snapped back around, and her eyes widened. "Sam, there's – there's _nothing _to forgive! I was never angry with you, of course I wasn't. This is just… a little out of my comfort zone. I just wanted to understand." A beat of silence passed, and then Sarah extended her hand and brushed it across Sam's shoulder. "We're good. I promise."

"Okay," Sam said quietly, facing back to the road. "Anything interesting in those journals?"

Sarah shrugged and straightened up in her seat. "Not much. I mean I think it's all interesting, because it's new to me and stuff, but specific to our quest involving reapers, no, there's not much. Where are we, by the way?" she added, glancing out the window as another mile marker sped past.

"A wonderful little stretch of Montana State Highway 83 between the towns of Bozeman and Livingston," he replied. "We're making good time – we have about twenty hours to go. We'll stop around six tonight, get actual dinner, and land in Lawrence around noon tomorrow." He glanced over at her. "That sound okay?"

She waited a moment before nodding, and he saw it. Something had dimmed in her eyes, and he felt a pang in his own chest for her. It was awful, he knew it was awful, to have a flash of hope for even that split second, and then lose it again. Of course he knew. He had felt it when he had remembered the devil's gates and then failed to open them, he had felt it when the eighth demon had rejected his deal, he had felt it when Ruby had told him what he had already known – that he wasn't getting Dean back from Lilith.

He reached his hand out, but he didn't place it on hers. He just held it there, suspended in the gold light seeping its way through the windows on his side of the car, and waited.

Sarah looked down at it, then up at him, then carefully marked her spot in the journal she was reading. Then she reached out too, and wound her fingers through his, and brought his hand down to rest in her lap.

"Yeah," she said. "That sounds okay."

* * *

Dean had never been the type of driver to spare much respect for little things like the speed limit. He'd had to charm his way out of his first speeding ticket when he was sixteen and in Indiana, and had failed to charm his way out of one for the first time when he was nineteen and in Florida. Both times Sam had been in the passenger's seat, and he had tried to scold Dean for not taking the first ticket and had laughed his ass of when Dean had been forced to take the second one, and Dean had shoved his shoulder and muttered about what a bitch his little brother was, and that he'd fuck up and get a ticket one day, and Dean would be there to see it. Sam had never gotten a ticket, though, not once – whenever Dean tried to give him shit about it, Sam would always retort that he at least paid enough attention to notice a speed trap ahead. For a all that, though, Dean had taught Sam to drive, and so of course Sam had developed the same healthy disrespect for the speed limit. The difference, Sam always argued, was that he took the extra half-second to learn where the cops were strictest.

Between that, and the understanding cooperation of both Sarah and Keates, they made it to Burlington, Colorado, at around three in the afternoon, where they decided to stop for the night. Sam hadn't been

"Tell me about the town," Sarah murmured as they crested one of the rolling hills and there it was, Lawrence, spread out below them.

Sam sighed, flexing his fingers around the steering wheel. "I don't know much. I don't think it's where my dad was born, but it's where he settled after getting back from Vietnam. He got a job as a mechanic. Not sure how he officially met my mom, given that the Cupid set them up."

"And your mother?" Sarah prompted.

"The Campbells have apparently been in Lawrence for a while. My grandparents decided to semi-retire from the life when Mom was a teenager, but I think they'd always lived here, I don't think Mom was raised on the road like me and Dean were. But she still hated the life." He paused, then sighed. "When she found out that me and Dean grew up hunters, she was devastated. But… anyway, she and Dad got married and bought a house here. And that's the house where she died. From what I gather – and you've read parts of my dad's journal – he avoided the state of Kansas entirely for a while, and he never worked a job in Lawrence. But when… when my psychic thing was acting up for the first time, I had a vision of the family who lived in my parents' house in danger, and I dragged Dean back."

"To the same house?"

"Yeah. He… it was hard for Dean. He was four, almost five, when Mom died, and he remembered parts of that night. Flashes. He remembers the fire, and he remembers carrying me out of the house."

"Wait – _Dean _carried you out?"

"Yeah." Sam nodded. "He handed me to Dean and told Dean to not look back, and then he went back into the nursery to try and help Mom, I guess."  
Sarah let the silence stretch out for a moment, then asked, "And the job you worked here?"

Sam ran a hand through his hair. "There was… there was some sort of evil spirit in the house, I don't know, and it turned out that the spirit of my mom was holding it off. But it had started to wear her down after, I don't know, the twenty years or however long it'd been, and… it was just fucking shit up. And…" he took a deep breath. "I don't remember much of the last time I was here. Because… it wasn't… really _me_."

"Lucifer," Sarah realized.

Sam nodded. "I remember flashes, but he kind of was in charge of whether or not I was awake. Until that last moment."

Sarah whispered, "oh," and Sam was glad that she didn't ask any more questions. He didn't tell her that with the route they were on, they were going to be passing Stull Cemetery. That just wasn't a conversation he wanted to have.

In the end, though, it turned out to not be his decision.

Because it was late May, almost summer, in the Midwest, they had all the windows rolled down. The sky was grey, but it was warm – _muggy_. Dean had always hated that word for some dumb reason. In any case, the windows were all rolled down, and Keates was lazing around the bench seat in the back, his head hanging out the window and his ears flopping in the slipstream caused by the car. And suddenly, Keates changed.

He sat up straight on the seat, ears perked up. Sarah shifted to face back and draped her hand over the top of the seat. "Keates? You okay, buddy?"

Sam would have turned back too, but they were navigating this narrow stretch of two-lane highway, winding through the rolling hills. So he heard, rather than saw, Keates's nails scrabbling against the worn leather of the seat as the dog shifted and hauled himself out of the back window of the car.

"_Keates!"_ Sarah screamed, shifting like she wanted to fling herself into the backseat and jump out after him.

"Stop it – stop!" Sam ordered, slamming his arm across her waist to pin her to her seat while his other hand jerked the wheel around and skidded to a stop on the shoulder of the highway. He threw his door open and slid out, and Sarah clawed her way across the seat to follow her out rather than open her own door. When Keates had landed, he had rolled a little before scrambling upright and darting off away from the road.

"Dammit, Keates," Sarah gasped, taking off after him at a run. Sam dove back into the car to retrieve his gun, removed the safety, and tucked it into his back pocket before racing after her.

Sarah caught Keates just as Sam was rounding a tree to find them. "Hey – you!" she snapped, lunging forward, grabbing Keates's collar and pulling him up out of his run. "What were you _thinking_?" she demanded, dropping to her knees beside him and gripping the fur of his face so she could stare into his eyes. "What the holy hell, Keates? Why would you do that? Why?" She shook his head gently.

Sam knelt down beside them and wrapped an arm around Sarah's shoulders and felt her shake. "Shh," he soothed her, while he dropped his other hand onto Keates's head. "Keates, what happened?" he asked, making sure to keep his voice quiet so as not to upset Sarah further. "You don't just take off like that for no reason."

Keates had quieted with Sarah's hands on him, but now he turned his head to focus again on Sam and barked, just once, before darting his eyes around them and then refocusing on Sam. Sam hadn't noticed until then that they were actually on some sort of path – that the grooves for tire treads were clearly visible around them. This was a road, or had been at one point, and Keates had jumped out of the Impala to run down it.

"Let him go, Sarah," he said abruptly, standing and pulling her with him.

"W – what?" she gasped, hair flying as she faced him, eyes wide.

"He's onto something." Gently, Sam wrapped his hand around Sarah's fingers where they still clutched at Keates's collar. "Let him go. We'll be right behind him. It doesn't seem like he's hurt."

Sarah looked from Keates to Sam, and back again, and then swallowed hard. Sam felt her fingers loosen as she released Keates's collar, and he drew her back. The dog's eyes darted between them for a moment before he huffed and took off at a gallop down the road, away from the highway. Still clutching each other's hands, Sam and Sarah followed. Sam slipped his free hand to the gun at the small of his back and drew it out, releasing the safety and bracing his finger on the trigger guard. He saw Sarah's glance dart to it and her brow furrow, but she didn't say anything.

The road wound through brush, mostly dead now so close to June, and Sam felt his heart pounding. Something was itching just under his skin, something familiar, but he didn't recognize this place – he was almost sure of it

And then they rounded the last bend, and Sam stumbled to a stop.

There before them was a rusted-out gate, hanging open, a sign reading "no trespassing" hanging from its bars.

"What?" Sarah demanded, skidding to a stop with him.

Sam didn't look at her as he whispered the words. "Stull Cemetery."

He could feel it the moment that Sarah recognized the name; she gasped, and her fingers tightened around his.

Keates ignored them both and raced into the graveyard, circling around a few times in the blank, grassy area in the center and barking furiously at the ground. Slowly, Sam stepped through the gates, leading Sarah with him.

The sound of Keates's barks was shrill, cutting through the late morning air, and Sam could feel his pulse beating in his temples. He barely remembered that day, just barely – Dean's voice promising not to leave, the fire licking at the edges of his mind as he forced Lucifer back, spreading his arms wide for that one last moment of fresh clean air before–

The breath rushed out of him, and he stumbled. Instantly, Sarah was there, pressing herself tighter into his side, smoothing his hair off his forehead. "Sam?"

"I'm fine," he told her, brushing her hand aside and blinking hard before looking around. The graveyard was the stuff of horror films – overgrown plots with cracked grey stones, gnarled trees and twisted branches and dead leaves everywhere. "Keates, can you – can you sit, buddy?" Sam asked distractedly, and after a moment the dog stopped barking, although he didn't sit, and he didn't stop growling down at the ground.

Sarah shivered and didn't move from her place tucked in close to Sam's side. When she spoke, Sam didn't hear her at first.

"What? Sorry."

"We could probably do it here," she murmured without looking at him. "The spell."

Sam tore his eyes away from the patch of ground that had so interested Keates. "You think?"

Sarah nodded. "Keates… the night we found you, I was walking Keates, and he took off towards the street, exactly like he did just now. It's like he knew. And if he thought that this place, _this place_, was important enough to jump out of your car for, then… he's probably on to something. Besides," she hesitated, then plunged ahead. "The spell doesn't call for a _burial site,_ after all. Just for the place where blood was spilt. If… if Lucifer hurt Dean like you told me, he probably–"

"Bled all over the ground," Sam finished for her, as something constricted in his chest. "You're right."

And just like that, _just like that_, it was real, they were here, they were going to do this. "Stay here," Sam said hurriedly, dropping her hand and starting back for the gates.

"Wait – don't leave me here!"

"You're safer here," he told her, bracing his hands on her shoulders so he could meet her eyes. "Do not think for one second that I would leave you here if you weren't. Listen. This is the kind of place that demons wouldn't dare enter, not after what's happened here, but there's nothing to stop them from circling. And that car – it's not a very subtle car, and they probably already know we're here. So yeah, stay here. Keates!" he threw over his shoulder, and the dog hurried up to them. "Protect her. I will be back in two minutes, I promise. Okay?"

Sarah bit down on her lip so hard Sam was worried that she'd draw blood, but she gave a quick, terse nod. "Just… hurry."

"Two minutes," he repeated, then hurried off. He broke into a run as soon as he reached the gates, and made it back to the car in a time that would have made his dad proud. In seconds he was back behind the wheel of the car, shaking his hair out of his eyes, and throwing the car into gear.

Dean had driven down this road, he remembered as he took the curves too hard. Dean had been down this path, certain of his own death, and the bastard had decided to blast Def Leppard.

When Sam pulled into the graveyard, Sarah was standing right where he'd left her, arms wrapped tightly around her middle, Keates pacing nervously at her feet. Her head jerked around when she heard the rumble of the car, and her eyes tracked the movement of the car until Sam drew it to a park off at the edge of the small meadow in the middle of the graveyard. He stepped out, slamming the door behind him, and she rushed to join him as he strode around to the trunk. "Here's what we need to do," he told her. "Get into my journal – in the glove compartment – and find an entry from around the end of December 2008. There should be sketches of runes that bind reapers." Sarah nodded jerkily and hurried around the car; Sam heard the door open and the sound of rustling from the glove compartment. For his own part, he found the only angel blade they had left after two of them had disappeared into purgatory with Dean and Castiel, the one he had taken from Uriel. He tossed it to the ground beside the back left tire, along with the bough from a cedar bough they had pulled from a tree somewhere in Wyoming and a steel canteen. He dropped a crucifix into the canteen, heard it splash in the water, and began muttering the blessing over it.

"Found it," Sarah said breathlessly, appearing beside him with his journal in her hands, a page marked by her thumb.

"_Et in virtu Spiritu Sancti_," Sam finished, withdrawing the crucifix and tossing it back into the trunk before screwing the lid back on the canteen. He turned to Sarah. "Okay. Okay," he muttered again, slamming the trunk shut and placing the canteen on top of it before scanning the few trees in the graveyard. He finally spotted one with a few branches thin enough to meet the purpose, and half-ran over to the tree to snap two of them off. He didn't notice Keates at his heels until he almost tripped over the dog after turning around to return to Sarah. "Here." He handed her one. "These runes? They bind reapers. We're going to replicate them here on the ground, big enough to cover pretty much all of this area. You follow?"

Sarah nodded, tucking her hair behind her ear with her free hand. "Keates," she called, and the dog trotted up to her side, eyes darting nervously between her and Sam. "sit," Sarah ordered, pointing at the patch of ground right beside the car, and Keates only hesitated for a moment before obeying.

Sam and Sarah made quick work of the runes, neither speaking, and Sam could see how Sarah's brow was furrowed, how determined she was to get this right. A rush of warm gratitude swept at his insides, and he forced it down. He would thank her later.

Sam finished slightly before Sarah, and when she joined him back at the car with a smudge of dirt across her nose, he took the angel blade and held it out to her, handle first. "You hold onto this," he ordered. "If anything looks like it's going to go to shit, use it. Don't hesitate."

Slowly, Sarah reached out and took the weapon. "I've never…"

"Stabbing motion," he told her. "Very simple. You'll be fine. Okay?"

"Okay." Sarah nodded once, tightening her grip on the handle. "Yeah. Okay."

Sam reached out and placed a comforting hand on her shoulder. "Are you all right?"

"Yeah," she reassured him. "It's just… a lot."

He nodded. "What do you say we get it over with and get out of here?" He waited to see her smile, then collected the cedar rod, the water, and the slip of paper on which he'd written the incantation for the summoning, translated into Latin.

Sam closed his eyes for a moment, remembering but trying not to remember too much, before he stepped over to the patch of ground where Lucifer had used his body to beat Dean within an inch of his life as Dean promised not to leave Sam. Swallowing hard, Sam knelt.

"Si ambulavero in valle umbrae mortis, non timebo mala, quoniam tu mecum es," he began, unscrewing the canteen and drizzling the holy water over the wood, making sure to rotate the rod so that it was evenly coated. "Veni ad me, in tempore necessitatis meae angelus mortis, et adiuva me, ut intelligam. Fero tui scientia et artes praecipio tibi coram." He closed the canteen again and gathered up a handful of the earth, dry now with the coming summer. "Quam ego loquor ad te, et in saeculum et in aeternum, te mihi in adiutorium," he intoned, rubbing the dirt all along the cedar, feeling the mud form. Once it was completely coated, he finished the incantation, "Per os meorum, fortitudo mea voluntas Dei gratia, praecipio tibi coram me."

With that, he stood, leaving the rod on the ground and drawing Ruby's knife out of his jacket, eyes narrowed as he looked around.

The air was still.

"Maybe…" Sarah stammered, "Maybe it was the wrong kind of cedar?"

Sam felt his shoulders slump, and something was prickling at the back of his eyes, crawling its way up his throat – that couldn't be it, they couldn't have come so far just to be _wrong_, just to have to give up again–

He turned, to say something to Sarah, what he didn't know, but in the next moment he was curling his arm around her waist to shove her behind him and brandishing the knife. Sarah squeaked and Keates was barking again, madly, but that didn't seem to faze the dark-haired woman standing a few yards away from them.

"Noisy, isn't he?" she asked, one eyebrow raised, shoving her hands into the pockets of her leather jacket.

Sam lowered the knife, but only slightly. "Tessa."

"Sam Winchester." She strolled a few steps forward, and Keates barked again. Sam could feel Sarah pressing closer to his back, and he reached a hand behind himself to take hers. "What, are we here to deal? Is that why you bound me? Last time I saw Dean, he wanted me to call my boss to yank your ass out of the pit. We in reruns?"

"Not… exactly." Sam made a decision, and tucked the knife back into his jacket. "Keates," he added in a whisper, and the dog shifted from barking furiously to a loud and steady growl.

Tessa tilted her head to the side. "What, then? You're here to ask me to help you mess up the natural order one way or another, so let's have it out."

Sam took a deep breath, and he could feel Sarah slightly relax the death grip she had on his fingers. "Dean is missing," he told Tessa, whose mouth twitched. "When he killed Dick Roman, something happened, we're not sure what, and he's just gone. I need you to find out for sure where he is, and help me get him out. Please."

Tessa snorted a laugh. "And why – _why –_ would I want to do that?"

That pulled Sam up short. "What?"

Again, Tessa advanced on them, and Sam's hand twitched for Ruby's knife again. "The last time I tried to _help_ you, I wound up being tortured by Alistair. Or did you forget that part? Did you forget that I had to babysit your brother as he stumbled around playing Death for a day, fucking up the natural order? Hell, I got possessed by a fucking Grigori demon because of some stunt your father pulled. So why on God's green earth would I want to help anyone named Winchester? What has it ever gotten me except pain?" she demanded, eyes hard.

Sam's throat tightened. She was right, of course she was right. "I'm sorry," he began, but he didn't get much farther.

"Because Dean Winchester is still alive," piped Sarah, stepping out from behind Sam, much to Keates's dismay. She ignored her dog's increased growls, though, and held her head up as she addressed the reaper, whose eyebrows appeared to be in some danger of disappearing into her hairline. "We know for a fact that Dean is alive, and that he's not in heaven?"

Sam did a double take. "We do?" he asked, but Sarah ignored him, although he thought he might have seen her swallow hard. In any case, she kept her eyes fixed on Tessa, so Sam watched the reaper too.

"If Dean is alive, and yet trapped in either hell or purgatory, then that's a violation of your precious natural order, isn't it? So is the fact that he's got an angel with him. Angels don't belong in hell or in purgatory, you should know that." her voice might have been shaking, or Sam might have been imagining it, but either way she took a deep breath and went on, "If you're interested in the status quo, if you're interested in keeping things the way they should be, then you should be interested in getting a living man back to earth. Right?"

Tessa's lips twitched. "I like you," she told Sarah, "even if you're playing with big girl toys." Her eyes darted to the sword in Sarah's hands before she looked back at Sam. "fine."

"Fine?" he repeated, sucking in a quick breath.

"I'll do it, because your little girlfriend is right, and because it's only a matter of time before Eve's family starts making a fuss over him." Tessa rolled her eyes. "Your brother and his pet angel are in purgatory."

Sam took a step forward. "You're sure?"

Tessa snorted. "Please. Anyway, like I said, I'll do it, but not for free."

Sam's hand tightened around Sarah's. "What do you want?"

The reaper jerked her chin at the angel blade. "That. Tax-free. It doesn't do anything for my peace of mind to know that Sam and Dean Winchester are walking around with one of the few weapons in existence that can kill my kind. There's shit starting to go down that it doesn't seem like you've noticed yet, and in the meantime, I want to be able to defend myself."

"Done." Sam didn't even hesitate, and Tessa smiled.

"Good. And we're doing this on my terms, so listen up." Tessa folded her arms across her chest and looked at Sarah like she was sizing her up. "There are reapers who can just grab your hand and spirit you away into purgatory. I'm not one of them; it's above my pay grade. Best I can do is open the portal for you."

"Portal?"

"There's a few of them all over the world. The closest one to us is in Maine, in the Hundred-Mile wilderness. Meet me there at this time tomorrow, and I'll open it for you. Twenty-four hours after that, I'll open it again so you can get out. Do we have a deal?"

Sam nodded. "You can have the blade after you get me back topside."

"You must think I'm an idiot," Tessa scoffed. "I remember what you and your brother did to Bela Talbot. I want it upfront."

Sam opened his mouth, whether to argue or to defend himself he didn't quite know, but again Sarah cut him off. "You open the portal for us and we give it to you before we step through into purgatory."

"You're not coming," Sam snapped without looking at her.

"I am too coming–" Sarah began to protest, but this time Tessa cut her off.

"It's just as well if you don't. Fine, we'll do it this way. I drop Sam in purgatory, and you – what's your name? Never mind, I don't actually care – give me the blade."

"And how do we know you'll actually get me back out?" Sam asked, eyes narrowed.

Tessa rolled her eyes. "Because Death is going to know that I talked to you. And for reasons passing my understanding, he's always had a soft spot for the two of you, especially Dean. I don't pretend to understand it. Anyway, he'll make sure that I keep my word. And if that fails, you don't actually _need_ a reaper to open the human portal from the inside." She held her hands out. "Even if I screw you, you win. See? All I want is that blade. So. Do we have a deal?"

Sam looked at Sarah, who was staring up at him. She raised her eyebrows and tilted her head to the side, and Sam could hear her voice in his head: _Well, it's not as if we have any other options_.

"Yes," he heard himself say. "Yes, we have a deal."

"Good." Tessa clasped her hands together and gave them a smile like a knife blade. "You have twenty-four hours to meet me in the center of the Hundred Mile Wilderness; you should be able to just make it. Pleasure doing business with you."

Sam blinked, and Tessa was gone.

"Good," Sarah muttered, businesslike, then tugged on Sam's hand and led him towards the car.

"Sarah – wait." Sam pulled her up, forcing her to a stop. "What did you mean, we know for sure Dean wasn't in heaven?"

Sarah opened her mouth, closed it, opened it again, and then said, "I will answer that. I promise I will. But not now, okay? We just don't have time right now." She saw Sam open his mouth to interrupt her, and hurried on, "Listen, we're also going to need to figure out what Tessa meant by saying that there are things starting that we can't see – shouldn't we wait until we have Dean and Castiel so we can all try to figure this out together? A full set of fresh eyes, all at once?"

Sam studied her, with her wide eyes and open face and honest expression. If it could hurt him or Dean, really hurt them… Sarah would tell him now. He knew that much about her.

"Okay," he said slowly. "We'll sit on it. Ready to go?"

"Yes, but here's how I think we should do it," she began as they strode towards the car, keates loping beside them. "It's a long drive, isn't it?"

Sam quickly calculated the miles in his head. "Following speed limits, about twenty-seven hours."

"And with you driving?"

"Twenty-three if we're lucky."

"Okay." Sarah stopped at the driver's side door and squared her shoulders. "Here's what I propose. You drive through the states with lower populations, so for like the first half, and then you let me take over so you can get some sleep."

"Sarah…" Sam was already shaking his head.

"Listen," she implored. "You're going to be in purgatory for twenty-four freaking hours, and you want to drive for twenty-four hours prior to that? I don't think so. After all," she pointed out, "you handed me an angel blade without much instruction on how to use it. I think I can handle driving your car."

Sam tried to swallow down his indecision. This wasn't _his_ car, it was _Dean's_ car, and Dean had never let anyone else except Sam drive it after Dad had given it to him, aside from Andy Gallagher, and he didn't exactly count, but Dean had let Meg drive the car because that was what they had needed to do in order to–

But Sarah was right. If he wanted to be worth a damn in purgatory, he had to be awake.

"Fine," he told her. "We'll trade off when we get to the Ohio-Pennsylvania border. Keates, go do your business," Sam added, and Keates yipped once before darting off into the woods. Sam faced back to Sarah. "Are we good on food?"

She shrugged. "We can go through a drive-through or something. We'll be fine. Sam… we got it," she told him, smiling. "We found a way to him. We found a way in."

"Yeah." Sam tried to smile, he did, but all he could think about was Ruby, and Lilith, and the way that everything had gone so wrong the last time he'd tried to get Dean back. What if it wasn't worth it, what if–

"Why are you making that face?" Sarah demanded.

"I just…." He breathed in deep and closed his eyes. "I fucked this up so bad the last time I tried to get him back, Sarah. I don't want to risk that again–"

"Hey," Sarah soothed, and before Sam could move she had stepped up to him and cupped one hand around his cheek and pressed a finger to his lips. "Shush. It's okay. It's not like last time. It's not. You're not alone this time. You have me, you have Keates, you have a plan, and you _don't_ have archangels gunning for you to fail. It will be all right. We will go to Maine, and you will get your brother out, and we'll patch him up as much as he needs patching up. It will be all right. The world will not end this time. I promise. I _promise_."

He stared at her, feeling the war in his chest – leaving Dean to die, disappointing him again, breaking the world again, getting him back…

"_Listen to me_," she breathed. "Would I let you fail? Would I let anything happen to you?"

Sam listened to his heart beat twice, then whispered, "No."

"No," she agreed. "It will be all right. Okay?"

Sam smiled faintly. "Okay."

"Good." She released him and walked around to the passenger's side. "So are we going, or what?"

It was, Sam realized as he opened the door and slid in beside her, the third time she had said that to him. He had followed her every time.

* * *

Even with Sam's driving for more than half of the way, and even for Sarah proving to have more of a disregard for traffic laws than Sam would have guessed, they barely made it. Sam's heart was still racing as they got out of the car, knowing that they wouldn't be able to drive any farther, and linked hands again to make it the rest of the way on foot. It was the middle of the day again, and somewhere above the old-growth forest the sun was shining, and fading through the branches. Sam couldn't shake the feeling that the forest felt like it was a trap of old souls.

"This is it," Sarah said, not looking up from the compass app on her phone. "This is the geographic center of the forest. What time is it?"

"Eleven fifty-eight," Sam answered, feeling his gut fall. "We're two minutes late."

"You don't think…"

"Over two minutes?" came a voice from behind them. They both spun around, and Keates began to growl again, at the sight of Tessa, leaning up against a tree, inspecting her nails. "In my business, things very rarely happen exactly on time. I think I can forgive you." delicately, the reaper stepped over the gnarled roots of the tree and strolled over to them, coming to a stop about three feet away. "So. Who's ready to start this crazy train?"

Sam tightened his grip on Keates's leash. Sarah had insisted that taking the dog might help, and even though Keates wasn't trained as a sniffer, they figured it wouldn't hurt to give him Dean's scent anyway, just in case. Sarah knelt down and wrapped the dog up in a hug, kissing the top of his head and ruffling his ears before she let him go and stood. Once she had fully risen, and met Sam's eyes, her lower lip trembled.

"Oh, no," Sam whispered, stepping close to her. "Listen to me," he told her, cupping her face in both his hands. "You wait for no longer than twenty-four hours, do you understand me? If I am not back by this time tomorrow, you take the car, and you go home. The keys are still in your pocket. You do not wait. You do not hesitate. You _go_, Sarah. This isn't worth your life."

Her face had drained of all color, and she began shaking her head. "Sam – no, you can't ask–"

"I'm not asking," he cut her off, shifting one of his hands to raise a finger and press it against her lips, just as she had done to him the previous day. "I will do my best to get Keates back to you, I will…" he hesitated, then plunged ahead, figuring that now was as good a time as any to address this _thing_ growing between them, "I will do my best to get myself back to you, you have to know that. You have to know that you are important to me. Beyond important to me. That's why I'm telling you that after a certain amount of time, it will not be safe for you to wait here, and that then you will have to go. Do you understand?"

"Sam…" To Sam's horror, a tear slipped from Sarah's eye and rolled down her cheek to wet his hand.

"I'm sorry." He brushed it away with his thumb. "But I need you to promise me. _Promise me_."

Abruptly she had moved, and she was pressed tight to his chest, and her arms were wrapped around his neck, and her breaths were warm and quick against his chest. "You promise _me_," she growled, her voice muffled in his shirt as he wound his arms around her waist. "You promise me that you will do everything and more to get you and your brother and my goddamned dog back, Sam. You promise me that you will be careful, that you will be safe, that you will keep your damn focus. I will not lose you. Not now."

"I promise," he murmured. She wasn't quite short enough for him to rest his chin on the top of her head, so he pressed his cheek into her hair instead. "I promise."

For just a moment, Sarah held him tighter, and he could feel her hand fist into the back of his shirt, and then she let him go, and stepped back, and rubbed her hand across her face. When she emerged, her jaw was set and her air was businesslike. She turned to Tessa, who had watched their little scene from a distance. "Where are you leaving from? Here?"

"Here's fine," Tessa nodded, and extended her hand to Sam, who glanced at Sarah one more time before stepping up. Keates trotted forward with him, nudging at Sarah's hip as he passed her, and Sarah took a moment to wrap her hand around his tail before letting him go. "Take my hand, Sam," the reaper said.

Sam wrapped his fingers around hers and made sure that his other hand had a firm grip on Keates's leash. Off Tessa's raised eyebrows, he said firmly, "We're ready."

She looked him up and down one last time before nodding, and then she closed her eyes. Sam forced himself to keep his eyes forward, to not look back at Sarah, as Tessa breathed deep and the night air started swirling around them, bringing with it leaves and twigs and whispers and clamors and – now – a bright blue white light. Sam flinched but did not move back as the light grew larger, as it stretched and widened, and became a hole through which he could see a forest, a different forest, not the same one in which he had been standing. He could feel he leash tremble in his hand, and he knew that Keates was shaking.

"It's ready," Tessa murmured, but Sam hadn't needed her to tell him that. He looked back at Sarah, one last time, and even though she pressed her hand to her mouth and there were tears leaking down her face, she nodded. She nodded at him.

Sam faced forward, and took a deep breath, and climbed through the portal, Keates at his side.

* * *

He thought he saw a flash through the trees, but it wouldn't be the first time he had imagined something in this place. He turned back to the vampire he'd just killed, stared passionlessly at the head lying a few feet away from the body, black-red blood seeping over the dead leaves. It hadn't wanted to tell him what he needed to know, and his patience had not outlasted its usefulness. He wiped the machete clean of blood on the vamp's clothing, and then stood, tucking it away in his jacket. Something was slipping inside him, he could feel it – he was beginning to lose something he'd sworn he'd never lose again.

It didn't matter, though. Nothing really mattered, not in this place, nothing except getting out. And if he had to sell his soul to do it – well, been there, done that. Nothing new.

The blue-white light he'd thought he'd seen earlier flickered, and he turned to study the surrounding forest. That light was unusual, even by the standards of this place. Maybe it was Cas. Maybe it was another angel come to find him.

Dean Winchester drew his angel blade, and started towards the light.


	9. Chapter 9

**Hi, friends. This is the longest chapter to date, and it has the most characters to date, so just bear with me.**

* * *

Sam and Dean had both hated camping for pretty much their entire lives. Their experience with woods was limited to hunts – they were always after a werewolf or a wendigo or some other nasty shit whenever they were in forests, so it's not like there were a ton of positive associations to be had. But Sam _had _spent enough time in forests to know that there were various sounds associated with them – birds chirping, leaves rustlings as squirrels skittered across them, the hissing sound that wind made as it swept through pine needles.

None of those sounds were present in the forest that was purgatory.

The ground sloped down quietly, and all around Sam were trees – grizzled, ageless, trees that looked half-dead and yet somehow seemed to whisper. Their roots emerged from the ground like fingers, clawing away at the earth, prisoners making their escape, spirits without conscience willing to do anything to survive. The branches allowed only the barest of the pale sunlight to leak through to the ground. Sam felt himself being watched, and for one mad second, he thought it was the trees themselves.

"Nice place," he muttered to Keates in an attempt to shake the chill off his back. But Keates wasn't having it – he padded a few inches closer to Sam's boot. Sam knelt down beside Keates, still darting his eyes around warily, and reached into the inner pocket of his jacket to withdraw a sock of Dean's that he'd tucked away. "Here, Keates. Get his scent."

Keates sniffed at the sock, once, twice, before standing up straight and scanning the small clearing where the portal had deposited them. He edged around the forest line, sniffing at all of the trees, while Sam drew Ruby's knife from his jacket and scored X's on a few of the trunks around them so as to ensure them finding the right location later, beating down the urge to flinch as he scarred the bark. His heart was pounding, and without his willing it, memories of the cage were surfacing. When it had gotten empty like this, it usually meant that something terrible – more terrible than usual – was about to happen.

Finally Keates straightened and tugged on his leash, looking over his shoulder at Sam until Sam walked back to his side. "Got him?" he asked Keates, who huffed and then headed off through the trees. Sam was at his side, the knife still out in his hand, and he prayed to whatever force might be listening in a place like this, that they weren't too late.

* * *

The blue-white light of the portal withdrew upon itself and was gone, suddenly, and Sarah shivered in the rush of air that went with it. She might have been imagining it, but the sunny May afternoon may have just dropped ten degrees in temperature. She glanced around, for what she didn't know, before hugging herself tightly. _Twenty-four hours_, she reminded herself. _Just one day._

Tessa, who had disappeared and reappeared so quickly that Sarah thought she might have imagined it, turned back to Sarah and held out her hand, eyebrows raised expectantly. Slowly, Sarah reached into her jacket and withdrew the angel blade, shifting it so that she was presenting the handle to Tessa. "Thanks, doll," the reaper said, taking the sword and holding it up to the sunlight to examine it. "Looks good. See you tomorrow, all right? Stay out of trouble."

"Wait," Sarah blurted before the reaper could vanish. Tessa turned back to her, free hand making a little hurry-up gesture. Sarah rushed to get the words out: "Do you know an angel named Naomi?"

Something in Tessa's face changed – she was closed off to Sarah in a way that she hadn't been before. "No," she said shortly, and before Sarah could push her on it, the reaper was gone.

Sarah glanced around, startled, but she was alone in the forest, with nothing to guarantee her that either Tessa or Sam would be back tomorrow. She took a deep breath and forced herself to turn away from the spot where Sam and Keates had disappeared and began the trek back to the Impala. She and Sam had already decided that she would check into the lodge at the end of the Appalachian Trail for the night, because Sam was adamant about her not pitching a tent in the forest by the portal and waiting there. Sarah tried not to choke on her own tears. Sam could do this. Sam would be back, he had promised, and she knew that he'd survived worse.

She knew that worrying wasn't going to do much to help Sam, but it wasn't as if there was anything at this point that she could do to help Sam. Her boots chafed against her ankles as she hiked back to the dirt road a few miles away from the portal, occasionally glancing down at the stupid little compass app on her phone.

It had taken them about ten minutes to get from the car to the dropoff point, half-running as they had been, certain they were going to miss Tessa. Walking at her usual speed, Sarah made it back to the Impala in fifteen. When she reached the car, she didn't get in and drive away immediately, because that would mean leaving, it would mean commencing her twenty-four hour waiting period before she could find out if Sam was all right. Instead, she boosted herself up and sat cross-legged on the hood of the car, staring out at the forest around her.

She had come to this park once with her mom on a camping trip, and she knew she was maybe eight hours away from home. In the past week, she had travelled more and seen more of the country than she ever had, unless you counted that summer she'd spent with a few other art history majors bouncing around Western Europe visiting museums. And she couldn't count that, not really – it hadn't been a journey in the way that this had been.

Sarah leaned back, bracing her palms on the hood, feeling the sun-warmed metal radiate heat into her skin as she stared up into the canopy, letting the dappled sunlight wash over her. She was a different person now, she knew that. She thought that maybe Sam was too. They had changed together, become new versions of themselves, together, and she didn't know what that meant. All she knew was that she needed him to come back to her so that they could work through that change together.

He had to come back.

She shook herself. She wasn't doing anyone any good where she was, so she slid off the car and stepped around to unlock the driver's door. This would be only the second time she'd driven the car, and she knew that initially it had made Sam uncomfortable. She had only a vague idea of what this car meant to him, meant to his brother, and she had the feeling that she was more honored than she knew to be able to drive it. The last person who had, after all, other than Sam himself, had been the demon Meg, and she had crashed it into the sign of the headquarters of a capitalist empire to do her part in saving the world.

As Sarah started up the engine, her thoughts wandered to Meg. Sam hadn't told her much, not really – just that Meg served herself, to be sure, but before that she served her cause. At last tally, her cause had been helping Sam and Dean overthrow Dick Roman. And now she was God only knew where.

The leather of the steering wheel was soft under Sarah's hands as she turned the car around on the little dirt road, guiding it back down towards the corporate rustic version of civilization that was the Appalachian mountain club. She had to call Erin, she reminded herself. It had only been texts over the last few days, and she really owed her friend a verbal check-in. she re-hashed what parts of the story so far were okay to tell her friend as she made the forty-five minute drive back.

It was a little before two when she pulled into the drive of the lodge, and she wanted to slap the valet who couldn't quite hide his disparaging expression when he saw the Impala. Stupid puppy – if he'd had any idea what this car actually was….

The valet appeared at her side, forcing her to stave off all thoughts of murder for a moment as she stepped out of the car. "Welcome to the Hundred Mile Wilderness, ma'am."

"Hi," Sarah muttered, reluctantly passing the keys to the valet as she edged around him to get to the trunk. All she grabbed was her own duffel and the canvas tote she'd stolen from Rufus's cabin and stuffed with books, and she thanked her lucky stars that Sam had securely shut the weapons hatch before he'd left her with the car. She waved away offers to help her carry the bags inside, and scowled to herself as she saw the boy drive off in the car. She had a feeling that Dean would kill her if he ever found out about this little moment, and vowed never to tell him. She adjusted the strap on her shoulder and strode into the lodge.

The lobby looked exactly how the lobby of such a large forest resort could be expected to look: unfinished wood everywhere, wrought iron fixtures, lots of flannel plaid in the upholstery, a few paintings of bears on the walls, a stone fireplace that would probably be roaring if it weren't the end of May. Sarah checked in, knowing it was unusual for someone to be alone, and only staying for one night, and with an early check-out time, please, but she ignored the clerk's raised eyebrows as she took her key card with a muttered word of thanks.

Her room was on the second floor, so she couldn't see much past the treeline, but she wasn't here for the view. She dropped her duffel on the bed's obligatory flannel plaid duvet and carried the bag of books over to the leather armchair in the corner. It took only a few seconds of rifling through the bag before she came up with the object of her search: John Winchester's journal. Sam hadn't said anything to her one way or another about reading it, and she figured that her best bet as… as something of a beginner hunter herself to read someone else's introduction to the hunter's life.

What she hadn't expected was to have her heart torn by the documentation of Sam's – and Dean's – early childhood.

She curled up in the chair and let the journal fall open in her lap as she checked her watch. Twenty-one hours and thirty-eight minutes until Sam was supposed to be back.

* * *

Sam stared around at the forest, panting. Keates had doubled back a few times, crossing their old paths, apparently confused by the scents he was catching. So far, they had been left alone by the monsters that Sam knew roamed this place, but the sun was beginning to set. This couldn't last. "C'mon, Keates," he muttered. "Get it together."

When the leaves crackled somewhere off to his left, it was a shrill sound in the total silence and Sam spun, knife ready, Keates tight at his side. "Show yourself," he ordered, back tense in a way it hadn't needed to be in a week.

The figure that stepped out from behind a tree a few yards away had its hands up in the air, but Sam didn't lower the knife. "Two humans in less than ten days," it said, with an accent that Sam couldn't place at the moment. "Someone better fix that leak."

"What are you?" Sam asked before he could stop himself. He knew without looking that Keates's hackles were up.

The figure smiled and stepped forward, hands still raised. "Name's Benny. Vampire. Nice to meet you."

A chill crept over Sam's spine. A vampire. And it had seen Dean… "What did you do with the other human?" he demanded.

The vampire raised its eyebrows in something that might have been surprise. "I didn't do anything to Dean. We're buddies, actually."

Sam lowered the knife by degrees. "Buddies?" he repeated.

"Keeps us both alive," the vampire – Benny – shrugged. "Worth a lot in this place. C'mon." He turned and began to walk off, but Sam called after him.

"Come where?"

Benny threw Sam a glance over his shoulder. "You seem mighty interested in Dean, so I figure you're here from him. Want me to take you to him, or what?"

Sam hesitated, evaluating his options, trying to ignore the fact that he didn't have a ton of options. The vampire had offered him no proof of life, but if Benny was going to attack him, now would be as good a time as any. There was no situation right now in which Sam would be expected to have any tactical advantage, whether he stayed where he was right now or not. He didn't really have anything to lose by going with Benny, except possibly time. He trusted himself, and he trusted Keates, to catch on if Benny was leading them into a nest. "Fine," he bit out. "But stay in front of me."

Benny laughed once. "You sound like Dean. Must be the little brother."

Sam didn't respond, and Benny shrugged before heading off into the woods again. Sam glanced down at Keates, who gave him an eyebrows-raised, _Are we seriously doing this_? Look, before he tugged on the leash and they followed the vampire out of the clearing.

They had been walking for half an hour, long enough for the night to get full dark, and not encountered anything except a stagnant body of water that might have once been a stream, before Benny spoke again. "Been down here long?"

"About twelve hours," Sam replied, his tone clipped.

"And how'd you manage the trip? Exploding penis get to you too?"

Sam ignored the note of laughter in Benny's voice as he replied. "Reaper helped me out."

Benny sobered up quickly at that. "Dangerous business, dealing with those creatures," he warned. "Hope you knew what you were doing."

"She got me here," Sam retorted. "That's all I really care about."

"Fair enough." Benny shot a look over his shoulder at Keates. "Dean didn't say anything about a dog."

"He's not ours." Sam hesitated, thinking about how best to answer the tacit question without giving too much away. "He belongs to a friend. Where did you say we were going?"

"Dean and I split up for a few hours a day," Benny explained, sidestepping the rotted-out corpse of something that might have been a wraith. "That pet angel of his did a runner, and we can't figure out why."

"Cas ran off?" Sam asked, surprised.

"Yeah, but don't tell your brother that. He'd prefer to think that something took Castiel. Beats me as to why. But anyway, we been trying to find him. Persuading creatures to tell us where he went."

At that, Sam stopped dead, Keates bumping into his legs. "Torture?" he asked flatly. "Dean's been _torturing_?"

Benny paused, then slowly turned to face Sam. "Look, call it what you will, but he hates doing it. I can tell."

Sam swallowed hard. He remembered all too well what the memories of Alistair and hell had done to Dean four years ago. If this place had driven him back there…

"Sam – can I call you Sam? C'mon. We're almost to the place where me and Dean split up, then we can start tracking him for real. That dog of yours must be itching to catch a scent. What's his name, by the way?"

"Keates," Sam muttered. "Can we keep moving?"

"Sure," Benny said obligingly, turning back around and continuing on. "He's still your brother, Sam. Whatever this place has put him through."

Sam managed not to snort, but with great difficulty. He didn't need a monster – a vampire to tell him that.

The word triggered something in his memory, something from one of the worst days of his life, and he almost stumbled before catching himself. _We don't think about that_, he told himself firmly, ignoring the way that Keates glanced up at him.

Benny came to a halt near an outcropping of rock over the stream. "Here's where we pitched camp last night. Let me see if I can–"

Sam interrupted. "Keates, get his scent."

Keates barked once before planting his nose on the ground and sniffing deep, circling the area for a few seconds before looking up at Sam and jerking his head in the direction of the forest. Sam tightened his grip on the leash and followed Keates, who resumed sniffing a path through the leaves. "All right, then," Benny muttered as he fell in beside Sam.

Sam knew enough about human biology to know that you couldn't actually feel it when your eyes dilated, but he was aware of it happening now, as he walked through the darkness with a vampire and a dog at his side. He could no longer feel his fingers as they wrapped around the worn wooden handle of Ruby's knife – it had grown into an extension of his arm. He hadn't felt like this in years, and he wasn't sure he welcomed the return of the feeling – the return of the knowledge that he was one of the deadliest people alive. It wasn't a part of himself that he enjoyed.

But it was getting him to Dean. That was what mattered. He shook off the memory of the last time he had justified his actions with that line. Sarah had promised him that this wasn't like last time, that this wasn't like Ruby.  
Abruptly Keates tugged on his leash, veering off to the left and into a small knot of gnarled pine trees, nose planted to the ground again. "Whatcha got?" Sam asked, following, hearing Benny trail behind him.

"Damn it," the vampire sighed, as they rounded the trunk of a giant tree and saw the mess spread out on the needles.

It was a corpse, Sam could see that, but it was damaged beyond the point of recognition – not for anything would Sam have been able to tell what the creature was. Even so, he knelt down beside the body and with two fingers shifted the head, ignoring the wet sound of blood and skin. "Clean cut," he murmured. "Head taken almost completely off."

"Half-assed it, didn't he? The kill shot," Benny agreed, inspecting the torso. "Deliberate cuts all down the chest, but not a full decap. Wonder if he got distracted. How many hours dead d'you imagine?"

Sam dipped his fingers in the blood and rubbed it between the pads of his thumb and index finger, feeling the temperature. "More than twelve hours. So you're sure it was Dean?"

"Ain't nothing else in here that needs to torture, Sam. Ain't nothing else in here that needs a machete, either. This was your brother."

"Fine." Sam ignored the word and got to his feet, looking to where Keates was straining on his leash. "Still got him, buddy?"

Keates made a sound that was half-whine, half-growl, and tugged on his leash until Sam and Benny followed him. Keates was sniffing at the trees themselves now, as if he thought they were holding Dean captive. Sam found himself unable to look up at the trunks.

Leaves crackled and twigs snapped beneath their feet as Sam asked, "When was the last time you saw Castiel?"

"Never actually did," Benny answered. "From what I gather, he and Dean lost each other pretty quick after they landed here. Dean and me made a deal – he'd get me out if I showed him where the human portal was, and he decided we needed to find your angel first."

"So what makes you so sure that Cas cut?" Sam asked suspiciously, pushing a low-hanging branch out of his way.

Benny laughed. "Ain't nobody in here ditch allies unless they got a good reason. I figure that if Castiel got taken, Dean would've found his body by now. He's too good at this not to. No, my money says Castiel don't want to be found."

Sam considered that as Keates led them over a rise and into a grove of what looked like yew trees. He had run too, once, when he'd felt that he'd done more damage than he could ever fix. And how long had it taken for his sin to catch up with him, for Steve and Reggie and Tim to force it down his throat?

Dean wouldn't stand for hearing that, though. After all, hadn't he come to Sam in the middle of the night and all but begged him to come find their father?

"You don't look surprised," Benny told him, and Sam glanced over to see the vampire watching him with raised eyebrows. "You think he cut?"

Sam sighed and said, "I know how he probably felt," and left it at that.

"Listen," said Benny, interrupting Sam's thought process, "it's been mighty quiet lately, and I feel like I got you and your brother to thank for that."

"How do you mean?"

Benny shrugged as they quickened their steps to keep up with Keates. "It's pretty kill-or-be-killed down here, but since me and Dean teamed up, that's slowed down. I guess it's not much of a secret that you and your brother are two of the best hunters on earth. Well," he corrected himself, huffing that same half-laugh, "not on _earth_ anymore, per se, but–"

He never got to finish that sentence, because from a clump of trees to their left, something leapt out at them, shrieking. Before Sam could shift to help, another pair of them descended from the branches above them, and Sam dropped Keates's leash and raised the knife.

There wasn't any time for panic, for calculation – he just shifted so that his back was to the vampire who had somehow become his ally and wielded the knife – one stroke upward, one to the side – and then an X was carved into the neck of one of the creatures and it fell with a gurgle. A second one lunged at him and he stiffened his left forearm and caught it in the chest, slamming it into a tree so that he could plunge the knife into its gut.

But there were more coming now, and from the corner of his eye he saw Benny bring one down with his fangs in its neck as Keates jumped one and caught its arm in his jaws like a vice – Sam pierced that one through the eye, but he knew it might not be helping, he had no idea what these things were except that they were humanoid, he had no idea if he was killing them right. And then another one pounced on his back and he reached up with his left hand and grabbed a fistful of its matted, knotty hair and tugged up, his skull vibrating as it shrieked in his ear. He dragged up and over, and the thing flew over its head for a split second before he slammed it into the ground and slashed its throat open.

In a half second he stood, and spun, and on instinct threw the knife so that the blade pierced the back of one of the things that was about to jump Benny; it fell with a scream. Sam realized an instant too late that he'd made a mistake; he'd lost his weapon. From somewhere off to his side, yet another one of the things barreled at him from the side, catching him in the legs and forcing him to the ground. Sam gripped the thing by the neck with one hand, his other catching one of its claws, twisting as much as possible to keep its fingers away from his face.

And abruptly the pressure was gone; Keates had leapt forward and sunk his teeth into the thing's shoulders. He dragged it backward and tore its neck into ribbons as Sam rolled over, panting, and managed to tug Ruby's knife free just in time to spin and gut one of the things that was about to jump him a second time.

He shoved himself to his feet, breath still coming in gasps, and groaned when he saw more of the things spilling through the trees. Jesus, where were they all _coming _from – he flipped the knife in his hand and slashed outward, catching one of the things in the throat before spinning to drive it into another one's heart. Behind him, he could hear Benny snarling and Keates yelping, and Sam turned to see Keates pinned by one of the things. Without thinking, Sam reached down and slit the thing's throat, killing it and lifting it slightly so that Keates could scramble out from under it. He'd left his back exposed, though, and he paid for it a second later, when one of the things grabbed him and slammed him backwards into a tree, its long spindly fingers wrapped around his neck.

His vision started to go black, and he scrabbled at the thing's hands – he hadn't been allowed to die on earth, and damned if he was going to die here, so close–

And then there was the sound of something sharp hissing through the air, and a wet slicing sound, and a spray of something warm over his face, and the fingers around his neck slackened and slipped away. Gasping for air, Sam looked up to thank Benny, but the figure before him, caked in mud and dried blood, eyes glinting with murder, wasn't the vampire.

"D – _Dean?_"

His brother gave him a quick half-smile, the same half-smile that Sam remembered from God knew how many fights all throughout his life. "You okay?" he asked quickly.

The question sobered Sam, put a little puncture in the bubble of jubilation swelling his lungs. They had a fight to finish –and right now, he was distracting his brother.

"Fine," he muttered, his left hand pushing Dean to the side while his right drove the knife into the throat of one of the monsters that was coming up behind him.

Dean grinned. "Good. Let's get this over with."

_This _was what Sam had needed – moving with Dean in concert, at each other's backs, not needing the match-up to be complete in order to know that it was perfect. Sam felt his back muscles relax again as he expanded his range of motion, slicing the knife through air and through flesh and through blood without worry of being attacked from behind. He could hear Dean behind him, covering him, covering Benny, as he ducked and twisted his hand upward, severing the artery and muscles in one of the thing's arms. It dropped to its knees, yowling, and Sam yanked its hair back and slit its throat.

Keates dragged one of the last things over to Sam, growling around his mouthful of jacket, and Sam made quick work of it. He straightened up, panting, just in time to see Benny wiping black blood from his face and Dean smoothly decapitating the last of the creatures. It was over faster than it had begun.

Dean turned back towards the others, breathing hard, and his gaze landed on Sam. His eyes were calmer now, his smile softer, but he still stuck his machete in the back of one of the dead monsters, the handle up in the air, for safekeeping. "Last time we did this, you attacked me with that knife," he said, his voice hoarser than Sam remembered it. "We doing that again? 'Cause Bobby ain't here to stop you from killing me now."

"Dean, shut the fuck up–" was all Sam managed to get out before he and Dean were both striding forward, and his arms were wrapped secure around his brother, and he could barely breathe because Dean was hugging him just as tight, and it was like it had been when he'd gotten a gold star on a spelling test when he was six, and when Dad had almost died in front of him on a hunt when he was ten, and when he'd gotten his arm sliced open on a cursed object hunt when he was fourteen, and when he had decided to go to Stanford when he was eighteen. Dean was here, oh God, he had found him, and he was warm and alive and safe and Sam's hands fisted in the fabric of his brother's jacket, breathing deep and giving thanks to anyone who would have them.

Dean braced a hand on Sam's shoulder to force them a few steps apart, but he didn't let go as he looked Sam up and down, smiling his satisfaction at the sight of his brother unhurt. "You okay?" Sam demanded. "You didn't get hurt when you got here or something, and you're not leaving some injury untreated because you think it's not a big deal?"

Dean held up his hand and grinned. "Scout's honor." He glanced off to the side. "I see you've met Benny?"

"Yeah – he…" Sam trailed off, that old voicemail surfacing in his mind again. Viciously, he beat it back.

Benny spoke for the first time since before the attack. "Told him about Castiel," he said to Dean.

"Yeah?" Dean glanced at the vampire before turning back to Sam. "What do you think?"

Sam opened his mouth, then hesitated. He was all too familiar with the naked hope in Dean's eyes – he remembered it from when their father had died. Dean had never done well with people leaving him.

"He's gotta be here somewhere," was all he said.

Dean's shoulders relaxed, and he nodded before freezing. "Wait – how'd _you_ get here? You're not–"

"I'm not dead," Sam reassured him. "No, I… it's a long story, but the gist of it is that caught a ride with Tessa."

"The reaper?" Dean's eyebrows rose.

"Yeah, and she's due to reopen the human portal for us in…" Sam glanced down at his watch. "Eight hours."

Dean raised a fist to his mouth. "Shit. We gotta find Cas, man. We have to. We can't leave him here."

"Of course not," Sam nodded. Whatever he thought about Castiel's motives for disappearing, God knew he didn't deserve to be left in here. Sam and Dean could help him, and they would all get over – over whatever was eating Cas. Together. "Where do we start?"

Dean grinned again and started to speak, but at that point Keates had apparently decided that the tension had dissipated enough, and he trotted forward and planted himself at Sam's side. Sam ran a hand over the dog's head; poor guy was still shaking. "You hurt, buddy?" he asked, kneeling down and running his hands over Keates's fur, cursing himself for not tending to the dog earlier. "You all right? That was a lot, huh?"

"Who's your friend?" Dean asked, a note of tension in his voice, and Sam froze. He had forgotten Dean's vague fear of dogs, which was normally something Sam would give him shit for, but he was almost entirely sure that it was because of the hellhounds four years ago.

Once he was certain that Keates hadn't been hurt, Sam stood and said, "Dean, meet Keates. It's… it's part of that same long story, but do you remember Sarah Blake? Haunted painting, New Paltz, New York, back in 2006?"

"Sarah… no shit?" Dean asked, lips twitching up. "I liked her. This her dog?"

"Yeah…" Sam ran a hand through his hair. "After Chicago, I was just–" he shook off the memory of how he had felt; Dean didn't need to hear that "–just driving, and I almost hit this guy here, and… look, I'll tell you all about it later, but now we should get on finding Cas. We're on a time crunch."

Dean watched Sam for a moment, then nodded. "You're right. Benny, you in?"

"Sure," the vampire shrugged. "As long as I can hitch a ride back through that portal like we talked about."

"Fine." Dean walked back over to where he had stuck the machete, and withdrew it with a sick squelching sound. "We better move on. We weren't exactly quiet just now, and more of these things will be along soon. Now, something somewhere has seen Cas, and we just gotta find one of them and grill it."

"Dean…" Sam began, then paused and backtracked in his mind. "There might be a more efficient way of doing it. Do you have anything that might have Cas's scent on it?"

Dean raised his eyebrows at Keates. "He can catch scents?"

"He got yours. Led us to that thing you decapitated back there."

Dean's eyes darted back and forth between Sam and Keates, and then he nodded towards the treeline. "Last time I saw him was the night we landed here, back that way. I don't have anything of his, but maybe his scent caught on something back there. If that doesn't work, though–"

"Then we'll find another way," Sam cut him off, stubbornly.

Dean's eyebrows rose up on his forehead. "You don't want me torturing."

"No," Sam said. "I don't."

"Gents, we're wasting time," Benny cut in. "Sam says he's got a ride coming, and I'd rather we didn't miss it. C'mon, Dean."

After a moment, Dean nodded once. "Fine. Let's go." He clapped Sam's shoulder and headed off into the trees, and as Sam, Keates, and Benny followed him, it was not lost on Sam that Dean had acquiesced to Benny's advice, and not his.

* * *

Sarah had barely slept.

John Winchester's journal had kept her up for the better part of the night, and even once her eyes burned too much for her to continue reading, she had curled up in bed and played the words over and over in his head – _"I told Sam that if he left, to not come back."_ She stared out the window at the vague scattering of stars visible in the night sky, her heart aching and her thoughts buzzing. Even at his very worst, her own father had _never _said anything like that to her. She couldn't even imagine what Sam had felt.

God, she missed him. It had been less than a week, and already she was so used to the idea that he was no more than a room away from her as she slept. What was more, it had been three years and she had only spent a few nights away from Keates.

The room felt colder than it ought to have been in May, and Sarah curled up tighter on herself as she glanced at the clock beside her bed. 1:43am. Sam had been in purgatory for almost fourteen hours. She reminded herself that he could take care of himself, that he and Keates had formed a bond that practically ensured that they would protect each other to the end, that he knew Dean well enough that it was almost guaranteed that he would find him in the time allotted. "It's going to be okay," she whispered fiercely to herself, the sound piercing the darkness.

She repeated the mantra in her mind, over and over, long enough to drown out the words of Sam's father, before she finally dozed off into a fitful sleep.

It was still dark when she woke, jolted awake by the vague sense that she'd been having a nightmare that she could no longer remember. She lay still for a moment before her situation rolled over her – John's journal, Sam in purgatory, Keates with him, a deal with an unreliable reaper to fulfill in six hours. Hurriedly, she shoved her blankets back and rushed into the shower, using the hot water to clear the last of the cobwebs from her mind. Names – there were far too many names buzzing around in her head… Sam and Anna and Dean and Naomi and Erin and Castiel and Tessa. She would deal with John Winchester later – probably the next time she had access to alcohol.

It wasn't yet seven in the morning when Sarah checked out, and she ignored the incredulous look of the AM clerk as she handed in her keycard. She wasn't aware of her own hunger until her stomach growled as she waited for the valet to bring the Impala around, but then she had skipped both dinner and lunch yesterday. Muttering her thanks to the valet and slipping him a tip, because he wasn't the same asshole as yesterday, Sarah slid into the driver's seat of the car and checked her watch, mentally calculating how much time there was left until she was due to meet Tessa, if she wanted to be there an hour early. Yes, she had time to eat, and really no excuse not to.

She drove through the little cluster of shops and visitors centers until she found a little café. Within fifteen minutes she was seated at a table outside, well away from the few other patrons in the shop, with a steaming cup of coffee and a bagel in front of her. Her phone was in her hand, her finger hovering over her father's number, before she sighed and scrolled through her contact list until she found Erin's name. Rather than pressing the text icon, she called.

Erin, as ever, picked up on the first ring. "Where are you?"

"Maine, still," Sarah sighed, picking at her bagel and staring out over the restaurant's patio to the street. The morning sunlight glinted off the hood of the Impala.

"And what's in Maine?"

Sarah ran a hand through her hair. "A really, really long story. But I'm okay."

"I've known you for twelve years, Sarah," Erin retorted. "I know how you sound when you're okay. You're exhausted. What's going on? Is Sam with you?"

"No, he's taking care of something. I'm due to go pick him up in a few hours." That part, at least was true. "We should be back in Montgomery by tomorrow night." And if that part _wasn't_ true, she would deal with the repercussions later. "How's my house look?"

There was a beat of silence before Erin replied. "It's fine. I've got all your mail in a basket on my kitchen counter. Sarah, you need to talk to your dad."

"I really don't."

"Yeah, you really do," Erin insisted. "This is the sixth day that you've been gone, sweetie. And I know… I know that the two of you don't exactly get along, but he's still your dad."

"What the hell does that matter?" Sarah snapped, the words of John Winchester darting through her mind again. "He doesn't always know what's best for me, you know. Someone… someone who I would call a friend, who saved my life once, needed my help, and I'm giving it to him. That required me dropping everything." She picked up her coffee and took a sip, the hot liquid slurping angrily. "I do sometimes have a life outside of him and his damn business. It does happen."

"I know that," Erin soothed. "Remember that one time you missed a final because I had the stomach flu? I know how you are with people you care about. Listen… if you're not going to speak to your father before you get home, fine. But you're going to have to talk to him after. You work for him, for one thing."

Sarah didn't respond to that, but the vague idea that had been lurking at the back of her mind for the last few days stepped forward. She wasn't exactly a force for _good_ as an employee of her father's gallery, not in the way she now knew she could be. That said, she had no idea what else there was for her to do, what else she was qualified for.

"Look," Erin huffed exasperatedly when Sarah's silence had apparently gone on too long, "I'm not telling you how to live your life. I went through that once when I said you should have married Ian and then he turned out to be an asshole, so whatever. I just don't think you're making the best life choices right now."

Sarah laughed once, without humor, and picked at her bagel. "It hasn't even been a week. Can't we let at least that much time pass before we hand down judgment?"

"Fine," Erin muttered. "Have you eaten breakfast?"

"I'm doing that now."

"Are you really? Or are you mindlessly picking away at a bread product?"

"Shut up," Sarah said defensively, taking her hand off her bagel and hiding it under the table.

"Okay, I'll let you get back to your food, but I have one question for you first." Erin paused, and Sarah hummed to prove that she was still listening. "You're doing a _lot_ for Sam Winchester, Sarah. I know you haven't told me half of it."

"Yeah…"

"Do you love him?"

Sarah choked on her coffee, the sound loud enough to make the elderly couple seated three tables away look up at her. "What?" she sputtered incredulously. "You just said it's been six days."

"Yeah. And in those six days you've traveled two thirds of the way across the country and back, and nobody does that for kicks. So are you?"

"I – I just…" Sarah stammered, looking around quickly as if she expected a distraction to pop up out of the artificial bushes. "There's no room in our relationship for romantic love right now."

"You say that like it matters."

"Erin, I have no idea what my relationship with him is even going to look like in thirty-six hours," Sarah whispered. "As soon as I figure it out, _if_ there's anything to figure out, I will let you know, all right?"

"I'm holding you to that. Now eat your damn breakfast. I'll talk to you tomorrow."

"Thanks." After a moment in which neither of them hung up, Sarah murmured, "Thank you."

Erin didn't ask for what. Instead, all she said was, "I love you too."

Smiling to herself, Sarah hung up and placed her phone down on the table, quickly spreading the creamed cheese over the bagel halves. She ate without tasting it, and she let the coffee burn her tongue. It was almost eight, now, and there was something that she had to try before Tessa arrived at the rendezvous point. She hadn't yet swallowed her last bite when she stood and shouldered her bag, reflexively looking around for Keates before she remembered.

Sam had promised to keep Keates safe. Sam had promised to keep _himself_ safe.

Sarah swallowed hard and clutched her phone before striding off towards the Impala.

Her drive into the forest was uneventful save for the fact that her heart had started to pound halfway there. When she finally parked at the dead end, an hour into the woods, it was all she could do to keep her hands from shaking. If Tessa was unable to bring Sam back… Sarah refused to consider it.

She slid out of the Impala and opened the trunk and then the weapons hatch, fishing through it for the weapon that had caught her eye a few days ago. Sarah had never been trained on any sort of firearm to speak of, but she _had_ been a Girl Scout, and during camp one year she had decided she'd rather take an archery lesson than braid a lanyard. Every year after that, all through her time through the Gold Award era, she had practiced archery. It had been her senior project in high school. Even now, it was a hobby, albeit one usually reserved for weekends and camping trips and impressing friends and winning bets.

So when she had seen the unstrung bow and quiver of arrows in the trunk of the Impala, she had filed the information away in a just-in-Case pocket. Dealing with a reaper who seemed more inclined to hate Sam and Dean than not qualified as just in Case.

Sarah slipped the quiver over her head. The wood of the bow felt smooth in her hand as she set off into the woods, and she was moving quickly enough that the clock on her phone only read ten-thirty in the morning when she arrived at the meeting point. She leaned the bow against a fallen log and removed her jacket, surveying the area for a tree that she wouldn't feel guilty about shooting. This wasn't her bow, after all, and it had been a few months since she had been out shooting. Practice wouldn't hurt.

After she'd draped her jacket over the same log, she plucked all the arrows out of the quiver – seven, she counted – and stuck them points-down in a line in the earth at her side and bent the bow against the ground to string it. It was heavier than her own, and a little too tall for her – she imagined it had been shaped for either Sam or Dean when they were about sixteen. She could still get a decent draw on it, though.

She hefted the bow in her left hand and nocked an arrow to it, feeling the drag of the wood against her finger. The head was iron and the tail looked to be the type of feathers that usually came with slightly better-quality fish bait. Sarah sighted a tree about fifty yards away, aimed for a knot in the trunk, and fired.

The _thwack_ that the arrow made when it hit the trunk was loud against the backdrop of rustling wind and birdsong around her, and Sarah lowered the bow to inspect her shot. She had pulled to the left, apparently, and the arrow had landed a few inches below her target, which made sense considering the bow size. She selected another arrow, and corrected.

She was satisfied with her fourth shot, and the fifth one was consistent with that. She smiled her satisfaction to herself as she landed the last two arrows as well, before checking her watch. Ten forty-six. Huffing in impatience, she set the bow down and went to retrieve her arrows.

* * *

Sam glanced down at his watch and sighed. "Dean," he muttered, looking up at where his brother stood in the center of a clearing, holding a fist to his mouth and darting his eyes around frantically, as if Castiel would suddenly step out from behind a tree. "Do you have _any _other ideas about where he could be?"

"Don't you think I would have told you by now if I did?" Dean snapped. "Sammy, man, please, _please_ just let me grab one of the fuckers in here–"

"You don't want to do that," Sam insisted, brushing his hair from his eyes. To his surprise, Benny nodded.

"It's not worth it, Dean, and I think you know that. C'mon, let's head over to that portal. If we see Castiel along the way, we'll grab him. He's gotta know that we're looking for him by now."

"Yeah… yeah, he–" as Dean was replying to Benny, he had turned, and had caught sight of Sam's expression. Whatever he had seen there pulled him up short, and he demanded, "What are you thinking?"

Sam hesitated, but he knew that after everything, Dean was going to demand this explanation, if that was what it took. "I just… I know where Cas's head is at right now, man. After the leviathans…"

"What about the leviathans?" Dean demanded, coming to a halt as he stared at Sam.

"He feels like it's his fault," Sam blurted. "And he just… he just wants time to punish himself for it. And I'm not saying that it's fair, or right, or that he deserves it… just that he _thinks_ he does. So yeah, he probably knows that we're looking for him. And he probably doesn't want to be found," Sam finished, and Dean's eyes were wide and Sam could tell that the idea had never even occurred to Dean. "So yeah, I would know how he feels," he murmured, his eyes drifting down to the ground. Keates, sensing the tension, moved so close to Sam that his flank was pressed into Sam's leg.

Dean was quiet for a long moment after that, and when he did speak again, his voice was rough. "You're right. We should keep moving." Quickly, and without looking at either of them, he strode out of the clearing towards where the portal would be. Sam glanced at Benny, who shrugged, before they both followed.

They had to rush to get to the meeting point in time. Through the edge of the woods, Sam could see a large outcropping of rock overlooking an open area, and he made sure that none of them were standing with their backs to it, just in case. "Tell me again how we do this," Dean said to Benny as he turned back to face him, still not looking at Sam.

Benny grinned and took a breath to begin his explanation, but something twitched in the corner of Sam's eye, and he looked up just in time to swear loudly and dive at Dean, shoving him out of the way of the vampire that leapt out from over the outcropping.

"Shit, shit, shit," Sam chanted, pulling himself to his feet and drawing Ruby's knife, cursing the fact that he didn't have anything bigger to work with. Dean was at his back again, machete ready, Keates was growling, and Benny was breathing deep and allowing his teeth to extend. Dean beheaded the first vamp in one stroke, but then what must have been the rest of the nest – Sam counted five of them – were sprinting at them from the treeline. One of them shouted something at Benny, something that might have been an insult, but Benny snarled and jumped at the other vampire's throat. Sam and Dean shifted so that they were side by side and prepared to rush the vamps as well. Before they could, though, Dean's head jerked to the left as he shouted "_Cas!_"

Sam just barely got a glimpse of a tall, thin figure in a dirty trench coat standing half-concealed behind a tree before a vampire jumped, him, nails bared and teeth gleaming; it was all he could do to grab the thing by the neck with his left hand before gutting it with the knife. When Sam looked up again, he could see Castiel walking away from them, away from the fight, not looking back.

The blue-white light flashed bright behind him, and Sam slit the throat of another vamp as he turned to see the portal opening at the top of the rocky outcropping and Tessa standing in it, leaning out and calling his name. "Dean – Dean, we gotta go," he panted, pinning the arms of a vamp so Dean could take its head off.

"But – Cas–"

"He didn't want to come!" Sam snapped, anger erupting somewhere below his lungs. "Now goddammit, I did not come this far just to lose you again! I refuse to deal with that again! We're leaving!"

Dean froze, eyes searching Sam's face, and Sam was about to physically lift his brother, objections be damned. Benny, however, called over to them before he had to.

"Go on, now," he encouraged, ducking swipes from a vamp. "I'll clean this up, and then I'll go find Feathers. Just be sure to come back and get me, you hear?"

"Fine–" Sam grunted, dodging a vamp that flew at his neck.

"Sam Winchester, I am closing this portal if you don't get it together!" Tessa screamed from above them. Keates was already scrambling up the rocks.

"Dean – please–"

"All right," Dean whispered, and brandished the machete to cover their retreat. He and Sam began the climb up the rocks, Sam jabbing at the vamps with Ruby's knife. He missed one, however, and Dean's cry of pain pierced his skull.

A vamp had hooked its claws into Dean's leg, and Sam leapt down the rocks to plunge the knife into its throat. The damage to Dean's leg had already been done, though, and Dean stumbled when he tried to stand. Sam was about to take the machete in one hand and get Dean in a fireman's lift with the other when Keates bounded back down the rocks, barking, and bit into the collar of Dean's jacket and proceeded to haul him back up the rocks, into the portal. Sam stepped in immediately after them, looking back just long enough to see Benny pin one of the vamps, before Tessa closed the portal behind them.

"Sam!" he heard Sarah cry, and he heard her footsteps running, running towards them as Dean groaned and dropped the machete to the forest floor.

Sam pulled himself up so that he was kneeling and, panting, looked up at Tessa. "Thank you."

Before Tessa could answer, Sarah was there. She had fallen to her knees in front of Sam and thrown her arms around him, squeezing so tightly that he could barely catch his breath. "'M'fine," he promised, breathing the words into her hair. "Dean's hurt."

"W – what?" Sarah pulled back from Sam and turned her worried eyes to Dean. "What happened?"

"Nothing much," Dean grunted sitting upright and poking at his leg before smiling at Sarah. "Hey, Sarah. Long time."

"This is touching and all," Tessa interrupted, "but I'm going to take off now. And I beg you, if you ever need a reaper's help again, please hesitate to call me."

Her eyes slid over the four of them before she shook her head once and vanished.

"She's… lovely," Sarah said, raising her eyebrows. "Dean, let's see your leg."

Keates circled around the three humans, apparently scoping out the tranquil Maine forest for any further hint of a threat, tail and ears twitching. "This poor guy," Sam told Sarah as he and Dean dragged the leg of Dean's jeans up to expose the injury, "was a fucking trooper. He took such good care of us. And he's not hurt," he added, reassuring her.

Sarah's shoulders relaxed a bit at that, and she smiled. "Thanks for keeping him safe."

"He did a number on keeping us safe, too." Keates barked once, looking quite pleased with himself.

As Sam used the knife to slit the blood-soaked denim, revealing five raw cuts spiraling down Dean's shin and calf, Dean murmured, "Thank you, Sammy." When Sam glanced up, surprised, Dean added, "For coming for me. For getting me out."

A lump formed in Sam's throat, and there were so many things he could have said, that he wanted to say, but all that came out was, "Let's wrap this and get you to a hospital. They should run some tests for infections – you might need antibiotics."

Dean nodded wordlessly, and Sarah helped Sam out of his jacket so that he could remove the button-down over his t-shirt and tear it into strips, which he then used to bind up Dean's leg, silently cursing the lack of any water to rinse out the wounds. Once he had secured the wrappings, Sam turned to Sarah. "You park where we were yesterday?" After seeing her nod, Sam held out a hand to Dean. "How do you feel about walking for about forty-five minutes?"

"Like it's gotta be done." Dean shrugged and took Sam's hand and allowed himself to be hauled upright. Sam looped Dean's arm over Sam's shoulders, supporting his brother, and let Dean test his weight on the injured leg as Keates and Sarah watched, the latter biting down on her bottom lip. "I can do it."

"That's great, but I'm gonna help you out anyway. Let's go."

Sarah scooped up what Sam recognized as his old shortbow, but she only said "What?" when he raised his eyebrows at her. Sam shook his head as he and Dean took their first steps, and Sarah and Keates fell in on either side of him.

Sam almost felt faint with the relief that went crashing through his body with no warning. Dean was back, and the sun was shining, and Sarah was safe. Anything else they could deal with as it came.

It was that moment, for the first time, that Sam felt himself breathe deep for the first time in nine days.

* * *

**Thanks for reading!**


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